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BY ALBERT C. 


ADDISON 

STORY OF 
R PILGRIMS 

LIFE OF TO-DAY 
3 

STORY OF 
FATHERS 

OF NEW BOSTON 
■TS BAY COLONY 


Company 

: Boston, Mass. 


THE ROMANTIC 
THE MAYFLOWE 

AND ITS PLACE IN THE 

Net $2.o( 


THE ROMANTIC 
THE PURITAN 
and their founding 
and the massachusel 

Net $2.5 


L. C. Page & 
53 Beacon Street :: : 







'^^^ 




Photographed from the Boston Parish Register 

Signature of John Cotton, 1620 



ROMANTIC STORY 

OF THE PURITAN 

FATHERS 



/ 



AND THEIR FOUNDING OF NEW BOSTON 
AND THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY 
TOGETHER WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE 
CONDITIONS WHICH LED TO THEIR 
DEPARTURE FROM OLD BOSTON AND 
THE NEIGHBOURING TOWNS IN ENGLAND 




THE 




J 



BY 



ALBERT C. ADDISON 

AUTHOR OF " THE ROMANTIC STORT OF THE MAYFLOWER PILGRIMS 
AND ITS PLACE IN THE LIFE OF TO-DAY," ETC. 





COPYRIGHT, 191 2, BY 
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 

(incorporated) 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



FIRST IMPRESSION, SEPTEMBER, I912 



THE-PLIMPTON-PRESS-NORWOOD-MASS-U'S-A 





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4: CI. A 3 :c» 7 7 4 \ 



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Si 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

Preface ix 

I. The Mayflower Pilgrims 3 

II. The Puritan Exodus — A Boston Adven- 
ture — John Cotton 17 

III. A Contemporary Picture of Cotton — 

His Preaching: "Death in the Pot" — 
Quaint Services in Boston Church 43 

IV. An Episode of Boston History — Mutila- 

tion OF THE Town's Maces — Atherton 
Hough as Image-Breaker .... $$ 

V. Church Life in Boston — The Lincoln- 
shire Movement — Faith and Flight of 
Cotton 67 

VI. Old Boston in Cotton's Day .... 85 

VII. Cotton's Boston Men — The New Life 
o'er Seas — Persecutions and Punish- 
ments 103 

VIII. The BosTONSAND "The Scarlet Letter". 135 

IX. Pioneers of Empire — Links with Old 

Boston — The Puritan Stock . . . 149 

X. Boston: East and West 181 

XL Cotton's Successors at St. Botolph's — 
The Church's Later History — Pil- 
grim Shrine 209 

Index 239 





ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

John Cotton Frontispiece 

River View, Boston, England. — Ancient Warehouses of the 

Merchants of St. Mary's Guild, Spring Lane, Boston, 

England o 

Deed Closet, Closed and Open, in the Old Council Chamber, 

Guildhall, Boston, England. — Old Treasury Chest, Closed 

and Open, Guildhall, Boston, England 12 

Grammar School, Boston, England, erected in 1567- 1568. — 

Interior of Grammar School, Boston, England .... 14 

John Endicott 18 

Arrival of Winthrop's Colony in Boston Harbour .... 22 

John Eliot preaching to the Indians 24 

Sir Richard Saltonstall 28 

Record of the Appointment of John Cotton as Vicar, June 24, 

1612 32 

Statue of St. Botolph, mutilated in 1620 by Atherton Hough . 62 
Tattershall Castle. — Sempringham Manor House; Modern 

Residence on the Old Site 73 

Roger Williams 74 

Entry of May 28, 161 3. — Entry of April 22, 16 14 . . . 79 
The Resignations of John Cotton, Atherton Hough, and 

Thomas Leverett 80 

St. Botolph's, Boston, England 85 

South Door and Porch of St. Botolph's, Boston, England, with 

Church Library above. — Church Library, St. Botolph's, 

Boston, England, established in 1635 87 

Altar Tomb of Dame Margery Tilney. — Miserere Seats in 

the Choir Stalls 89 

The Old Vicarage, Boston, England, occupied by John Cotton. 

— The Old Church House, Boston, England 92 

vii 




viii ILLUSTRATIONS 

F&GB 

Record of the Marriage of Thomas Leverett to Anne Fisher, 
1610. — Record of the Admission of Thomas Leverett to the 
Freedom of the Borough, January 18, 1618. — Record of 
the Election of Thomas Leverett to the Town Council, 
March 7, 1620. — Record of the Appointment of Thomas 

Leverett as Coroner, May i, 1624 105 

Record by which Atherton Hough was "made free" of the 
Borough, May 22, 16 19. — Record of the Election of 
Atherton Hough, on August 21, 1619, to the Common Coun- 
cil. — Record of the Marriage of Atherton Hough to Eliza- 
beth Whittingham, 1618 106 

Record of the Election of Atherton Hough as Mayor, May i, 

1628 108 

Record of the Election of Richard Bellingham as Recorder, 

November 7, 1625 no 

Signature of John Whiting. — Skirbeck Church of which 
Samuel Whiting was Rector, 1625-1636. — Record of the 
Marriage of Samuel Whiting to Elizabeth St. John, 1629 . 112 

John Wilson 116 

Hugh Peters 122 

Harry Vane 124 

The Mud and Thatched Hut which served as the Original 

First Church in Boston, Mass 137 

House of Richard Bellingham, Chelsea, Mass 138 

Simon Bradstreet 141 

Cotton Mather 152 

Increase Mather 154 

John Winthrop 160 

John Leverett 164 

Oliver Cromwell 168 

The First Church, Boston, Mass 175 

Statue of Governor John Winthrop, standing outside the First 

Church, Boston, Mass 176 

The Cotton Memorial in the First Church, Boston, Mass. . 178 
Interior of the Cotton Chapel, St. Botolph's, Boston, England. 
— Reredos placed in the Cotton Chapel in 1907 .... 185 




^ 





ILLUSTRATIONS ix 

PAOB 

Trinity Church, Boston, Mass. — Tracery of Ancient Window 

removed from the Chancel of St. Botolph's, Boston, England 187 
Record of the Marriage of John Cotton to Sarah Story . . 189 
Canon Blenkin. — The Pulpit of St. Botolph's, Boston, Eng- 
land. — Canon Stephenson 196 

John Cotton Brooks. — Bishop Phillips Brooks. — Bishop 

Lawrence 201 

Relics of the Struggle for Civil and Religious Liberty . . 210 
Tablets in the First Church, Boston, Mass., to Sir John 

Leverett, John Endicott, and Sir Henry Vane 221 

Five of the Miserere Seats in St. Botolph's, Boston, England . 222 

The Guildhall, Boston, England, from South Square . . . 232 
Record of First Meeting of the Boston Corporation under 

Henry VHI's Charter, on June i, 1545 234 

The Old Council Chamber, Guildhall, Boston, England . . . 236 



^H 



PREFACE 



^ II 'HE year of grace 1909 marked the Sex- 
centenary of the founding of Boston 
Church. Six long centuries had rolled 
their course since the first stone of the giant 
steeple was laid by the great-grandmother of 
Anne Boleyn, mother of Queen Elizabeth. 
The site was an older church of St. Botolph, 
and the foundations of the colossal tower were 
sunk deeper down than the bed of the river 
Witham by which it stands. The building of 
the "Minster of the Fens'* continued during 
the reigns of six sovereigns and occupied a 
hundred and fifty years. On through the cen- 
turies the church has been a landmark, not 
only for the flat country and winding water- 
ways stretching around, and fishermen and 
mariners upon the sea, but in the history un- 
folded in two hemispheres. It is a noble old 
pile to-day, and about it cluster many hallowed 
memories. 

That great tower of St. Botolph's has in its 
time looked down upon some strangely moving 
spectacles. It has witnessed the passing of events 
pregnant with the shaping of human destinies. 
Midway in the Hfe of the church came the Pil- 
grim Fathers to Boston. That was in 1607. 
Here they were imprisoned. Here at that 
time germinated the wide-spreading movements 




XII 



PREFACE 



out of which sprang the New England States. 
From the coast to the north, hard by, the Pil- 
grims escaped next year to Holland, and there 
followed the sailing of the Httle Mayflower and 
the planting of New Plymouth, one of the most 
daring and romantic and fruitful adventures 
in the annals of the race. 

Now set in, as the result of happenings in 
Lincolnshire, the Puritan emigration which took 
out to the American continent those sturdy 
men from Old Boston and the neighbourhood 
who gave to the New Boston its name and 
helped to build up the Massachusetts Settle- 
ments. It was a grand, if hazardous, enter- 
prise on which these pioneers embarked. We 
know how it was reahsed. Pilgrim and Puri- 
tan ahke had a hand in the work accomplished. 
What the Pilgrim began the Puritan carried 
forward to a full development. Well may 
Gainsborough and its vicinity, and, more par- 
ticularly, Boston of the Lincolnshire centres, 
be proud of their share in the achievement; 
and well may these historic homes of a mighty 
race, the mother Boston especially, fill the 
warm place they do in American hearts. 

After the Puritan exodus Old Boston con- 
tinued to be closely identified with the stirring 
episodes of the seventeenth century; and, 
amid her memorials of a glorious past, she looks 
back with pride on the stand she, in the dark 
days, made for liberty. The pages which fol- 
low relating to the town are the outcome of 



PREFACE 




quiet research conducted for the most part on 
the spot. Forgotten corners have been ex- 
plored, official papers overhauled, records and 
registers scanned and photographed, and the 
materials in this way collected serve to clothe 
with a warmer human interest the dry bones of 
such skeleton chronicles as have existed. Much 
care has been bestowed in collecting and arrang- 
ing the unique series of illustrations accompany- 
ing the work, which includes, among other 
things important to the subject, facsimiles 
produced for the first time of official entries 
concerning John Cotton and his Boston men 
— afterwards prominent figures in New Eng- 
land life — their marriages, appointments as 
Vicar, Mayor, Freemen, Town Councillors, Cor- 
oner, and Recorder, the appreciations of Cot- 
ton's services to the town, and the significant 
resignations of himself and others who shared 
his enforced exile. 

Fresh leaves are turned in the book of Old 
Boston's history which shed a fuller and truer 
light upon the actions of the times. Nothing, 
for instance, could exceed in value and inter- 
est the detailed account here given, drawn from 
a contemporary source still fortunately acces- 
sible to us in the dusty ecclesiastical archives 
of the county, of John Cotton as he was when 
he had been two years Vicar of Boston, the 
nature of the teaching of the great Puritan 
preacher, and the character of the services of 
his church. 




XIV 



PREFACE 



The reader is presented also with a picture 
of the famed Fen borough as Cotton knew it, 
and of the venerable church in which he min- 
istered, as it stood in his day. Succeeding 
chapters treat of the new life o'er seas, its frui- 
tion and its failures, trials and tragedy. The 
fortunes of the Old Boston men are traced, and 
some peculiar historical parallels and associa- 
tions of the Bostons noted. Coming down to 
later times we see emphasised the ties of kin- 
ship subsisting between the two places and the 
impressions created by certain notable Ameri- 
can pilgrimages made to Old Boston. Finally 
we learn something of Cotton's successors at 
St. Botolph's and the chequered history of the 
church and its affairs. The story is one of 
deep interest to the two Bostons, and, if the 
telhng of it here should happily help to draw 
them yet closer together in the bonds of affec- 
tion and goodwill, the task entailed will not 
have been discharged in vain. 





"^EW places in England possess a more 
H impressive history than Boston, in Lin- 
colnshire. The records of this ancient 
township go back to the middle of the seventh 
century, when Botolf, a pious Saxon monk, 
allowed to settle here by Ethelmund, King of the 
East Angles, founded a monastery on an **un- 
tilled place where none dwelt,'* named Icanho or 
Ox Island, "a wilderness unfrequented by men,'* ^ 
the St. Botolph's Town of later years. Towards 
the close of the ninth century came the invad- 
ing Danes, with wasting fire and sword, and 
the saintly Botolf and his following and the 
rude structures they had raised were swept 
away. 

' Capgrave ; who adds, " but possessed of devils, whose phan- 
tastical illusions were to be expelled thence, and a religious con- 
versation of pious men to be introduced." 



4 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

Next the Normans — whom the Saxon fenmen 
were the last to resist^ — set up a small stone 
church, and this in turn made way for the present 
noble edifice, commenced on the same site in 1309 
and carried over and around the older church, 
which was not removed until the new building 
was completed. The story is that the founda- 
tions of St. Botolph's Church were of timber 
and woolpacks. This, in part, is no doubt 
literally true; at the same time it is meant to 
express, in metaphor, that the trade in those 
commodities produced the wealth which enabled 
the people to erect the church. But no mere 
material prosperity would have inspired such a 
design: it was due also to the rehgious enthu- 
siasm which had been aroused by the preaching 
of the Friars. 

After the Norman Conquest, Boston entered 
upon a period of growing prosperity compared 
with the rest of England. There was then no 
surplus population to be employed in manu- 
facture. This is practically the position of 
Canada and Austraha to-day. The chief raw 
product of England was wool, and trade con- 

1 Led in the main by bold Hereward, "The Last of the English," 
who, from his fastnesses in the Fens, for a time defied the in- 
vaders. William himself at last undertook to break up the Camp 
of Refuge. A fleet approached from The Wash, the Isle of Ely- 
was invested, and, to facilitate operations, Aldrath Causeway was 
repaired to the southwest. Hereward escaped the slaughter, and 
eventually his patrimony was restored to him. This was the last 
organised resistance to the Conquest. The story is told with 
vigour and historical fidelity by Charles Kingsley in his book 
"Hereward the Wake." 







I 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 

sisted in exporting wool and importing in ex- 
change for it cloth and manufactured goods 
and articles of luxury. Now Lincolnshire has 
always been a county famed for its sheep, and 
Boston is a port facing towards the Nether- 
lands, which was the great manufacturing 
country. At this period Boston was as Sydney 
now is, and Ghent and Bruges were as are Leeds 
and Bradford. The stream of trade flowed from 
the Asiatic regions at the southeast across 
Europe to Britain in the northwest. The great 
commercial cities of the world were in the centre 
of that route, in Southern Germany and North- 
ern Italy, and Boston was on the route. Thus 
it was that Boston in the reign of John — who 
lost his baggage in the neighbouring Wash — 
ranked next to London as the second port in 
the kingdom. But Boston's prosperity was 
highest from 1300 to 1450, the period during 
which its glorious church was building. Those 
were the days of the Hanseatic League, which 
had its steelyard and staple at Boston. Four 
friaries were established in the town, and the 
numerous mercantile guilds which sprang into 
existence were another evidence of its com- 
mercial growth. 

But there was a turn of the tide. England 
became a self-supporting country which manu- 
factured its own raw material; such towns as 
Norwich and Worsted took the place once held 
by the Flemish cities, and the Fen port was no 
longer wanted for the export of wool. While 



6 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

ships were made larger, its harbour was silted 
up; Boston was a decaying town. The suc- 
cess of the Moslems broke up the old overland 
trade route to India, and the attempt to find 
a new route led to the discovery of America. 
Instead of flowing in an easterly direction, 
the main stream of trade was across the 
Atlantic towards the west, and Liverpool and 
Bristol usurped the place which Boston had 
once held. 

And so the glory of the Boston of the Middle 
Ages departed. The Easterlings and their 
League, the steelyard and the staple, were but 
a memory; and the friaries and the mercantile 
guilds went the way of the rest. Yet Boston 
survived the loss of its trade and of institutions 
associated with its mediaeval activity and im- 
portance. Greater things were reserved for it. 
Soon it was to be redeemed from the obscurity 
which threatened it and to obtain a place in 
world-history by reason of the part it played in 
the peopling of New England and its share 
in the founding of the American States. It was 
in the period of the great upheaval in Church 
and State that the Lincolnshire Boston made its 
impress upon the pages of history. 

True, in the centuries which followed, Boston 
benefited by the drainage of the surrounding 
Fens and became the metropohs of a wealthy 
agricultural district and a centre of distribution 
for the corn trade. Great granaries reared them- 
selves on the banks of its river, and in still more 




' i^\-^y^^-^-*^A^^a>-^tt^ -^\* tf*j .^ 




Photograph by Hackford, Boston 

River View, Boston, England 



t!^F 




Photograph by i/ if . /, /> ., i 

Ancient Warehouses of the Merchants of St. Mary's Guild, 
Spring Lane, Boston, England 



M 




i 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 7 

recent times it came to have docks as well as a 
harbour, and a better passage to the sea, and 
to thrive as a shipping and fishing port in the 
realm of modern industry. 

But even so its commercial position was rela- 
tively less important than that of the old days, 
and its title to a wider recognition had still to 
rest on the times when, having ceased to export 
cargoes of wool to be made into cloth in Hol- 
land, it sent forth the men of mark who made the 
name of the American Boston, and incidentally 
the fame of the English Boston. 

So it comes about that the history of Old 
Boston, which endures in the eyes of men and 
will be handed on, is in the main that which 
clings to its monumental church and the men 
who worshipped and went out from there, and 
to its Puritan associations and its Pilgrim Father 
shrines. , 

^ In a remoter sense it has claims in the same 
direction which are not without interest. With 
the cause of religious freedom from its incep- 
tion onward it can boast of certain links. Sir 
Thomas Holland, for example, holder of the 
ancient manor of Estovening at Swineshead 
near Boston, married the Fair Maid of Kent, 
afterwards the wife of Edward the Black Prince 
and mother of Richard H, whose consort, Anne 
of Bohemia, was the mother of the Reformation 
m England. It was on the petition of Anne that 
the Guild of St. Mary at Boston, which built 
the Guildhall, was incorporated: evidence of her 




^fr 



M 



ti^^^ 



8 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

action has come down to us in the carved head 
of the Queen commemorating it on the miserere 
bracket of a stall in the church. Boston was 
the maternal home of Anne Boleyn, who followed 
Anne of Bohemia as the mother of the Reforma- 
tion in England. To Boston also belonged the 
family of Thomas Cromwell. 

The accomphshed and fascinating Anne 
Boleyn, who married Henry VIII, was daughter 
of Sir Thomas Boleyn, who had married a sister 
of the Duke of Norfolk. This alhance brought 
Sir Thomas into touch with royalty and led to 
the presence of, his daughter at the Court of 
Queen Catharine. The history of the unfor- 
tunate Anne is a melancholy romance. Her 
ancestress was that Dame Margery Tilney who 
laid the first stone of Boston steeple, the giant 
"Stump," in 1309. "And thereon laid shee five 
pounds sterhng." ^ 

Thomas Cromwell, the "Hammer of Monas- 
teries," was son of Catherine, sister of Sir Richard 
Cromwell, alias Williams, the founder of the 
house and great-grandfather of OHver Crom- 
well, the Protector. Richard Cromwell was 
born in the parish of Llanilsen, and, migrating 
to Boston, held lands at Cowbridge, so named 
after the Cowbridge family in Glamorganshire. 
The Cromwells and the Bouchiers were settled 
in the neighbourhood of Boston before they went 
down to Huntingdon and Essex. Thomas Crom- 
well was a clerk in an English factory at Antwerp 

1 Stukeley. 





i^r^.c 



iMi^" 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 

when he engaged in a remarkable enterprise for 
renewing Pope Julius' "pardons" to Boston, 
the facts of which are attested by John Fox in 
his "Acts and Monuments.'* ' ■ 

Fox, himself, was born at Boston in 15 17. 
He lost his father at an early age, and when, a 
convert to the reformed doctrines, he was tried 
for heresy and deprived of his fellowship of 
Magdalen College, Oxford, he was disinherited 
by his stepfather, Richard Melton, a Romanist. 
Nothing is known of his parents except that 
they were of "respectable rank" in Boston. 
The name occurs some half-dozen times in the 
local records of the second half of the sixteenth 
century, but only in one case, that of "John 
Fox, draper," can a family connection be traced. 
The spot where Fox saw the light was a passage 
at the angle of Peacock-lane, behind the old 
Council House, on the site of which in later 
times stood the Angel hostelry in the Market- 
place. 

But these things by the way. The period 
which concerns us here is that time of tumult 
spoken of — the first half of the seventeenth 
century. Chiefly we have to do with the Puri- 
tans of the church, who gave the New Boston 
its name; but first we must say a httle about 
those sturdy dissenters of the Gainsborough 
community who, fleeing from persecution, left 
their homes in the North-Midland villages, 
attempted to escape by sea from Boston, suc- 




ceeded later in sailing from the North Lincoln- 




10 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 



shire coast down the Humber, and finally, after 
their sojourn in Holland, led the way out to 
the West and planted the germ of the New 
England Colonies.^ 

Their leaders were William Brewster of 
Scrooby, the devoted elder who did so much 
for his brethren throughout, and William Brad- 
ford of Austerfield, a younger man, afterwards 
Governor Bradford and author of the valuable 
manuscript "History of Plymouth Planta- 
tion." These were the Pilgrim Fathers. 

It was in the autumn of 1607 that the Pil- 
grims appeared at Boston and there arranged 
for a passage across the North Sea. Elder 
Brewster preceded them and hired a vessel, in 
which they embarked a little below the town, 
probably near where Skirbeck Church stands 
on the north bank of the Witham. But the 
treacherous shipmaster, a Dutchman, betrayed 
them to the officers of the port and they were 
promptly arrested; for, be it remembered, it 
was a crime in the eyes of the law to emigrate 
without license. Hurried into open boats, they 
were stripped and robbed of their belongings 
and carried into Boston, a spectacle for the 
gathered crowd, and then thrown into prison. 
They appear to have been kindly treated by the 
magistrates, who, as Bradford tells us, "used 
them courteously and showed them what favour 
they could,'* and this is not surprising, for 

^ For the full history of this adventurous emigration see "The 
Romantic Story of the Mayflower Pilgrims," by the present author. 







THE PURITAN FATHERS ii 



( O'T 



Puritan sympathy was already spreading in the 
town. 

After a month's detention, during which the 
Privy Council was consulted as to the disposal 
of them, the majority of the prisoners were dis- 
charged and sent back to their homes. Seven 
of the leaders were kept in custody, including 
Brewster, who, says the Plymouth historian of 
after years, "was chief of those that were taken 
at Boston and suffered the greatest loss." At 
last they were bound over to the assizes. What 
happened to them there we have no means of 
knowing; but we do know that, in the autumn 
following, they made a second and more suc- 
cessful attempt and got away from the Humber 
in another Dutchman's ship, at a point on the 
Lincolnshire shore above Grimsby. Even then 
they were surprised by armed men, and some 
in the confusion were left behind; but eventu- 
ally all assembled at Amsterdam, whence they 
moved on to Leyden, where they stayed eleven 
peaceful years, till the summer of 1620, when, 
determined to form an English-speaking colony 
of their own, they made the historic voyage out 
west in the little Mayflower. They reached 
Cape Cod a hundred strong on November 21 
and a month later going ashore at Plymouth, so 
named in honour of their last place of call, the 
English Plymouth. Here, after losing many of 
their number by cold, famine, and sickness, the 
heroic band estabhshed a settlement whose 
noble future they could never have dreamt of 




12 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

in those first days of struggle with hardship and 
adversity. 

There is much in Old Boston still to remind 
us of the Pilgrim Fathers. First we have the 
ancient Guildhall, built by the Guild of St. 
Mary towards the close of the fifteenth century. 
Here, in the basement, are still to be seen two 
of the dark and dismal cells in which Brewster 
and his companions in search of freedom were 
confined,^ before they were brought to the Hall 
to be taken before the justices in the court-room 
above, reached by a winding wooden staircase, 
part of which remains, and a trap-door cut in 
the floor at the top! At other times they were 
presumably accommodated in the old Town Gaol 
then standing in the Market-place, but long ago 
pulled down. On the walls of the upper room, 
with its open roof and heavy oak beams, may be 
read the table of Boston's Mayors since 1545, 
when the town received its charter of incorpora- 
tion. Leading from it is the quaint old Council 
Chamber, used after 1554,^ when the property 
of the defunct Guilds was granted to the Corpora- 
tion by Philip and Mary, down to 1835, with 
its empty labelled archives hidden behind beauti- 
fully carved folding doors, and a painting of Sir 
Joseph Banks, once Recorder of Boston, hang- 
ing on its wainscotted walls. In the court-room 

* As far back as 1552 it was ordered that the kitchens under 
the Hall and the chambers over them should be prepared for a 
prison and a dwelling-house for one of the Serjeants. 

^ In 1583 the inner chamber of the Hall was repaired and 
"made strong for a Council House." — Corporation Records. 





THE PURITAN FATHERS 

justice continued to be administered by the 
borough justices and the quarter sessions, till 
nearly the middle of the nineteenth century, 
but the fittings were not removed until 1878. 
There is a larger apartment in the fore part of 
the Hall, with a minstrels' gallery and a hand- 
some Gothic window containing fragments of 
the original coloured glass. Here in the old 
days were eaten the civic banquets prepared 
in the spacious kitchens beside the Pilgrim cells, 
and the huge open fireplaces, capacious coppers, 
and monster spits bear mute and chiding witness 
to the festive prodigality of an unreformed 
Corporation. 

Leaving the Guildhall we soon reach the 
Grammar School, built forty years before the 
Pilgrims came to Boston, standing in the old 
mart-yard in South End, wherein for centuries 
was held the great annual fair of St. Botolph's. 
Behind the Grammar School, just across the 
fields, is another landmark of Old Boston, 
Hussey Tower, all that is left of the stately home 
of Lord Hussey, chief butler of England under 
Henry VHI, beheaded at Lincoln in 1537 for 
favouring the Pilgrimage of Grace. The pris- 
oners of 1607, skirting St. John's Church, already 
a partial ruin, would, on their way back into 
the town, be within a stone's throw of these 
Hussey walls, and the old mart-yard which they 
passed close by must have echoed to the voices 
of the mob which clattered at the heels of the 
Pilgrim Fathers. Above all, over the winding 





THE PURITAN EXODUS — A BOSTON 
ADVENTURE — JOHN COTTON 




^^^ 




II 



THE PURITAN EXODUS — A BOSTON 
ADVENTURE — JOHN COTTON 

Westward the star of empire takes its way. 
— Epigraph to Bancroft's History of the United States 

WWF yHILE Lincolnshire was at the root of 
the Separatist pilgrimage from which 
sprang the Plymouth Colony, it was 
also associated with, and indeed gave the impetus 
to, the great Puritan exodus which followed 
from 1628 onward, out of which grew the Massa- 
chusetts Settlements. Both movements had 
their origin in the county in which Gainsborough 
first and Boston next were the cradles of non- 
conforming activity. The Eastern Counties 
joined in the later emigration, attended with 
such far-reaching results, and Dorset, Devon, 
and Somerset had an important share in it. 
It was this movement, composed for the most 
part of men driven unwillingly out of the 
Church of England, that secured the ultimate 
permanency of the foothold on American soil 
obtained by the heroic pioneer planters of New 
Plymouth. 

The Puritan exodus, which was to have such 
momentous consequences, had its inception in 




"^M 



i8 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

1627, when (as Thomas Dudley, who emigrated 
in 1630, wrote home to the Lady Bridget, Countess 
of Lincoln) "some friends being together in 
Lincolnshire fell into discourse about New Eng- 
land and the planting of the Gospel there." 
We know who those friends were. The central 
figures were Theophilus Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, 
and his family, around whom are grouped John 
Cotton and his Boston men, and Dudley, 
Cotton's friend and the Earl's trusted adviser. 
Their conferences in Boston Town, and at 
Tattershall Castle and Sempringham Manor 
House, the Earl's neighbouring seats, were 
participated in by Isaac Johnson, WiHiam Cod- 
dington, Roger WilKams, and other ministers 
and members of the Puritan party. 

The Lincolnshire leaders were at this time 
in communication with the men of Dorchester, 
who had attempted without success to estab- 
lish a trading station on the shores of North 
America. The idea of a settlement there was 
now rekindled, and John White, the Puritan 
rector of Dorchester — that father of New Eng- 
land colonisation — fanned into flame the dying 
embers of hope. John Endicott being selected 
to head the enterprise, a patent was, in March, 

1628, obtained from the Council of New Eng- 
land, and, sailing from Weymouth in the Abigail, 
Endicott landed in September on the neck of 
land now called Charlestown and there began 
*' wilderness work," in which he was assisted 
by the Plymouth Colonists. 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 




The venture prospering, John Winthrop and 
his partners acquired the rights and interests on 
Massachusetts Bay granted under the deed of 
1628, and, in March, 1629, secured the charter 
of the Massachusetts Bay Company. In April 
and May, 1629, this corporation sent out an 
expedition of five ships : the George, the Talbot, 
the Lion's Whelp, the Four Sisters, and the 
Mayflower — the same Mayflower of famous mem- 
ory, which nine years before had conveyed across 
the Atlantic the Pilgrim Fathers, and was now 
assisting also in the settlement of Massachusetts 
Bay. She was yet further to be heard of in 
connection with the New England colonisation. 
These ships carried Samuel Skelton, from Lin- 
colnshire, and two other ministers, Francis Hig- 
ginson, of Leicester, and Francis Bright, from 
Rayleigh in Essex, together with a goodly com- 
pany and plenty of supphes. 

But it was not until the spring of 1630 that 
the main body of Puritan emigrants sailed from 
Southampton. This was John Winthrop's 
party. They numbered with their servants 
upwards of a thousand souls, and fifled with their 
belongings quite a little fleet of ships. Drawn 
chiefly from the Enghsh middle class, they in- 
cluded many persons of genteel birth and some 
of noble family, notably the Lady Arbefla 
Fiennes, wife of Isaac Johnson and sister of 
the Earl of Lincoln. 

These voyagers to the West did not leave their 
native land without the pastoral exhortation and 





20 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

benediction, which were delivered by John 
Cotton himself — "the John Robinson of the Bos- 
ton Pilgrims" he has been aptly called — who, 
although in shattered health and on the eve of 
a prostrating sickness, had journeyed down from 
the Fens, with his good friends among the emi- 
grants, to see them safe on board. And there 
he stood on the deck of one of these ships — most 
probably the Arbella, in which Winthrop and 
the principal people were passengers — anchored 
in Southampton Water, just as Pastor Robinson 
had stood ten years before on the shore at 
Delfshaven to speak farewell words of advice 
and comfort. 

The sermon which Cotton preached on this 
memorable occasion was from the appropriate 
text II Samuel vii. lo, "Moreover I will ap- 
point a place for my people Israel, and I will 
plant them, that they may dwell in a place of 
their own, and move no more." It was after- 
wards pubhshed under the title of "God's 
Promise to His Plantation." The discourse in 
its simple, touching diction, and that per- 
suasive eloquence for which Cotton was famed, 
must at such a time have deeply impressed 
these people who were just setting out for a far- 
distant shore. "Have special care," he said, 
"that you ever have the ordinances planted 
amongst you, or else never look for security,' 
and again as he closed, "Neglect not walls, and 
bulwarks, and fortifications for your own de- 
fence; but ever let the name of the Lord be your 



I 








THE PURITAN FATHERS 21 

strong tower, and the word of His promise the 
rock of your refuge." Sad, as such partings always 
were, must have been the leave-taking of John 
Cotton and these friends, most but not all of 
whom, after three and a half eventful years, he 
was fated to rejoin in their wilderness home. 

The main expedition had a great ''send off." 
Led by the Arbella, with the Ambrose, the Jewel, 
and the Talbot astern, the ships were cheered 
by crowds of assembled spectators as they left 
port. 

While the Arbella, with Winthrop and the 
charter on board, was detained off Yarmouth, 
Isle of Wight, on April 7, the departing com- 
pany issued their interesting farewell letter "to 
the rest of their brethren in and of the Church 
of England, for the obtaining of their prayers 
and the removal of suspicions and miscon- 
struction of their intentions,'* and avowing 
their continued attachment to "our dear 
Mother** Church. The document was signed by 
Governor Winthrop and his chief associates, 
who had solemnly agreed "to pass the seas (under 
God's protection), to inhabit and continue in 
New England"; the second signature being that 
of Charles Fiennes, of the family of Lord Say 
and Sele, one of whose daughters married the 
young Earl of Lincoln, a brother of the Lady 
Arbella Johnson. 

The voyage was speedily resumed. From 
what Thomas Dudley afterwards wrote to the 
Countess of Lincoln, we know that it was an 



22 T HE ROMANTIC STORY OF 



exciting one. Scarcely had they lost sight of 
land when eight sail were descried from the 
masthead coming up astern. These surely were 
the Frenchmen of which they had been warned; 
so hasty preparations of a warHke kind were 
made to receive them. On Dudley's ship Lady 
Arbella and the other women were removed 
with the children to the lower deck, the gun- 
deck was cleared, cannon were loaded and powder 
chests and ** fireworks" got ready, and the men, 
all armed, were appointed to their quarters. 
Then the captain having, as an experiment, 
"shot a ball of wildfire fastened to an arrow 
out of a crossbow, which burned in the water 
a good time," all went to prayer on the upper 
deck, after which the ship ** tacked about and 
stood to meet them.'* But it was a false alarm. 
The suspected enemy proved to be the tail of 
the expedition, and as the ships met they saluted 
each other, and "our fear and danger was turned 
into mirth and friendly entertainment," a happy 
ending of the scare. 

Without further adventure of the kind to 
break the tedium of the voyage, the exiles 
reached New England on June 12, and, landing 
at Salem, pitched their tents on Charlestown 
Hill, afterwards crossing the Charles River. 
They called the place (the Shawmut of the 
Indians) Trimountain, because of its three hills; 
but later it was renamed Boston,^ in honour of 

^The order of the Court of Assistants, Governor Winthrop 
presiding, "that Trimountain shall be called Boston," was passed 





THE PURITAN FATHERS 

Old Boston, which sent to the settlement many 
prominent Puritans. 

Almost the first thing these Christian emigrants 
did was to form a church; and on July 30 
a day solemnised at Salem and at Plymouth, 
at Dorchester and at Watertown, as well as by 
the Massachusetts Company at Charlestown — 
four of their chief men framed and subscribed 
the covenant which stood unaltered through the 
centuries as that of the First Church in Boston. 
The first to sign was Governor John Winthrop, 
a man of learning, wisdom, and piety, of whom 
it is recorded that, when a preacher could not 
be found, he "exercised in the way of prophesy- 
ing," that is, he preached. After him signed 
Thomas Dudley, the deputy-Governor, a **man 
of a sincere temper and earnest, honest purpose," 
but ** somewhat querulous and exacting." Isaac 
Johnson comes next, "a prime man amongst us, 
having the best estate of any, zealous for re- 
ligion, and the greatest furtherer of this planta- 
tion," but a man fast passing from the scene of 
his cherished hopes. "Dead since" was pres- 
ently written over his name as it stands under 
the covenant; and as Dudley affirms, "he made 
a most godly end, dying willingly." Last to 

on September 7 (o.s.), 1630. "The name of Boston," says the 
Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, LL.D., President of the Massachu- 
setts Historical Society, in "The Memorial History of Boston" 
(pp. 116-117), "was especially dear to the Massachusetts colonists 
from its associations with the old St. Botolph's Town, or Boston 
of Lincolnshire, England, from which the Lady Arbella Johnson 
and her husband had come, and where John Cotton was still preach- 
ing in its noble Parish Church." 





24 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

sign was Pastor John Wilson, who had been 
"sorely harassed in England for nonconform- 
ity," and who told Governor Winthrop that, 
"before he was resolved to come into this 
country, he dreamed he was here, and that he 
saw a church arise out of the earth, which grew 
up and became a marvellous, goodly church'*; 
which was indeed a prophetic vision. 
~ Sickness and famine, deaths and desertions, 
formed the tale of those early days of the Tri- 
mountain Colony. But like their neighbours, 
the New Plymouth Pilgrims, these Puritan 
settlers persevered, and fresh arrivals from the 
old country filled up their diminished ranks. 
The first rush of adversity over, steady growth 
set in. Mr. Wilson returned to England for 
his family, and was away more than a year; 
during his absence the charge passed to John 
Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians. Deacon 
Gager's service had been of the briefest; he 
died on September i, "a godly man," they said, 
"and a skilled chirurgeon." Francis Higgin- 
son, teacher at Salem, heard about the same 
time the call of Death. Governor Winthrop's 
son, Henry, was drowned soon after arrival. 
It is sad to have to relate that one of the earhest 
victims in the new settlement was the Lady 
Arbella, who died at the end of August. Her 
husband, Mr. Johnson, a month later followed 
her to the grave. One was buried at Salem 
and the other in what came to be known as the 
King's Chapel ground. (Hawthorne in "The 





John Rogers, Sculp. 

John Eliot Preaching to the Indians 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 




Scarlet Letter" speaks of "the broad, flat, 
armorial tombstone of a departed worthy — 
perhaps of Isaac Johnson himself" over which 
the elf-child, Pearl, irreverently skipped and 
danced.) Mr. Johnson belonged to Qipsham in 
Rutlandshire, and after his marriage had resided 
at Boston in a town house of the Earl of Lin- 
coln's in Barbridge Street, or modern Bargate, 
where the Earl had a mansion, gardens, and 
land. The Dineley family had for many years 
occupied a residence in Bargate, to the south 
of the Earl of Lincoln's property. Their name 
is found among the early settlers of Boston, 
Mass., and this fact suggests the probability 
that they came under the influence of their 
Bargate neighbours. 

The curious story has here to be related, that 
of the actual sailing from Old Boston of a ship- 
load of Puritans. The attempt of 1607 was 
nipped in the bud, and that from the Humber 
in 1608 was not completely successful. This 
second Boston venture, early in 1636, in the 
good ship Prosperous, with eighty emigrants, 
succeeded so far as clearing the port went; but 
the vessel never reached New England, some 
queer doings interposing. 

We know that the Earl of Lincoln's family sup- 
ported the American colonisation, and we have 
seen the unhappy fate of the Lady ArbeHa. Her 
sister, Lady Susanna, wife of John Humphrey, 
also went out to New England; while a third 
daughter of the family married that conspicuous 




<^f 



26 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

figure in New England life, John Gorges. Their 
uncle, Sir Henry Fiennes of Kirkstead, was a 
zealous Puritan, and it was his son, Harrington 
Fiennes, who shipped the fourscore emigrants in 
the Prosperous at Boston. Their destination 
was given out as Harwich, and for their landing 
there Sir Henry Fiennes and his friend, Robert 
Hutton, of Lynn, became bound to the Crown 
in six hundred pounds. But they did not land 
at Harwich, and inquiry was set afoot to learn 
the reason why. Some sort of explanation was 
necessary, both in the interest of the shippers 
and of the bond. 

"Marmaduke Rayson, of Hull, gentleman," 
made the explanation. It took the form of 
a deposition, one so quaint and startling 
that we had better have the reciter's own 
words. "Now this deponent declares that he 
was one of the said persons so shipped, and 
for which the said obhgation was entered into, 
and that the said ship and men being in their 
passage from Boston towards Harwich, they 
were set upon and taken by French pirates, and 
were robbed and stripped, both of their apparel 
and all their other goods and provisions in the 
said ship, and so were violently carried away; 
but it happened that a ship of Dunkirk met 
with them, and chased away the French ship, 
and did carry the said ship in which this depo- 
nent, with the residue of the said passengers 
then were, towards Dunkirk, but yet, by the 
said Dunkirker's direction, this deponent and 





THE PURITAN FATHERS 27 

the residue of the said passengers were set 
ashore upon the French coast, by means whereof 
the said passengers could not be landed at 
Harwich, according to the condition of the said 
obhgation." 

Presumably the bond was saved. The seizure 
by a pirate watching The Wash was a thing 
likely enough to happen, and the story was 
certainly plausible. The Crown, one concludes, 
would have to be satisfied with it. Be this as 
it may, the purpose of the expedition is plain 
to us. Its failure was but in keeping with the 
ill-fortune of the Puritan voyages from the 
Lincolnshire coast. 

Notable men made the passage with Governor 
Winthrop. Samuel Skelton, the Lincolnshire 
clergyman who had already gone out, was 
among the first ministers of Salem, but his work 
was short, for he died within five years. The 
son of a second nonconforming divine of the 
same county was Simon Bradstreet, born at 
Horbling, who emigrated in 1630 and years later 
came to be a Governor of Massachusetts; he 
was to survive them all and to be known as 
'*the Nestor of New England." 

The Rev. Thomas James was another Lin- 
colnshire man. He arrived in New England 
two years after Bradstreet and was the first 
minister of Charlestown; but he returned home 
subsequently, became minister of Needham in 
Suffolk, and was ejected for nonconformity. 
George PhiHips the minister came over in the 



^V^ 



28 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

Arbella. With Thomas Dudley, a Northamp- 
ton man, but a disciple of Cotton*s at Boston, 
William Coddington, of Alford and of Rhode 
Island fame, Dudley's friend and Cotton's 
pupil, was also a passenger in the Arbella. So 
was Sir Richard Saltonstall, "that excellent 
knight" as Mather called him, who did not 
remain in New England for long; while another 
of the ships carried John Wilson, the Sudbury 
preacher, "a man great in disciphne," inspired 
by a noble dream. 

In March, 1631, the Council of Plymouth 
made a grant of territory to the Earl of Warwick, 
who transferred his patent to William Fiennes, 
Viscount Say and Sele, and as a result of this 
the Puritan settlement of Connecticut was 
founded. It was to Lord Say and Sele that 
John Cotton wrote, three years later, that 
Mr. Pym, Mr. Hampden, Sir Arthur Hasbrig, 
Oliver Cromwell, and others had prepared to 
join the brethren in New England, but were 
discovered and restrained by the Crown. 

All this brings us to the exodus, in 1633, of 
the Puritan exiles from Old Boston and its 
neighbourhood: John Cotton, Richard Belhng- 
ham, Thomas Leverett and his son John, 
Atherton Hough and others — names to con- 
jure with in New England history. Here were 
some of the best citizens that were to be of 
the young America. Including those who had 
already gone out, no other town or district made 
such a religious and pohtical contribution to 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 29 

the building of the Massachusetts Settlements.^ 
Small wonder that they rechristened Trimoun- 
tain and called it Boston. Good men and true 
there were who hailed from divers parts and 
rendered the best service to the new-born 
nation; but no other place gave it so many 
worthies. And the chief of them all was John 
Cotton. 

The future teacher of the first Church in the 
New Boston succeeded Thomas Wool as Vicar 
of Old Boston in 161 2. The circumstances were 
uncommon. Benjamin Alexander was selected, 
but did not accept. And it is said that Cotton's 
election was due to a mistake of Mayor Nicholas 
Smith, who, having to give a casting vote, in- 
tended to vote against him, but put the mark in 
the wrong place! Cotton Mather, the Vicar's 
grandson, tells how the Mayor requested a 
second ballot and repeated the mistake, and 
then wanted a third, which the wearied Council 
refused. 

It is remarkable that the names of "Cotton" 
and "John Cotton" occur often in the Boston 



1 "Various influences were united in the constitution of the Massa- 
chusetts Company that also affected the policy of the Colony. The 
religious and political elements are more marked in the views and pur- 
poses of the men from the eastern counties of England, usually termed 
*the Boston men.' The commercial element existed more visibly 
among the adventurers from the western counties of Dorset and Devon, 
who were commonly designated ' the Dorchester men.' The merchants 
and capitalists of London mingled hopes of profit with the desire to do 
good and advance the sense of religion." — Samuel Foster Haven, 
LL. D., Librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, in "The 
Memorial History of Boston," Vol. I, p. 88. 




r-53> 



W^^^^^^^ 



'f^^'QuJf 



30 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

parish registers among the burials and baptisms 
towards the end of the sixteenth century. 
There is a christening in 1572 of John, son of 
John Cotton. The funerals start in 157 1 with an 
Isabel Cotton; John Cotton, and Edward son of 
John, follow in 1575; WiHiam Cotton died in 
1578, and Margery Cotton followed in 1580. As 
though this were not enough, the local historian 
says another John Cotton was buried on May 
27, 1576; but this surely was the John Cotton 
registered March 27, 1575. There was a John 
Cotton who died at Kirton in 1592; and the 
first of the name to be found hereabout was 
Hugh Cotton, Rector of Wyberton in 1540 and 
predecessor there of Bishop Sanderson, author 
of the General Thanksgiving and Preface to the 
Prayer Book. 

But all the Cottons enumerated notwith- 
standing, John Cotton, Vicar of Boston, did 
not originate from Old Boston or anywhere near 
it. He was born at Derby and descended from 
Cottons in that district. The son of Roland 
Cotton, who is said to have been "educated as 
a lawyer," his parents, an early biographer tells 
us, were "of good reputation; their condition, 
as to the things of this life, competent; neither 
unable to defray the expenses of his education 
in literature, nor so abounding as to be a tempta- 
tion, on the other hand, unto the neglect thereof. 
John Cotton received his first instruction under 
Mr. Johnson, master of Derby Grammar School. 
He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1598, 







THE PURITAN FATHERS 




before completing his thirteenth year, and after- 
wards migrated to Emmanuel, of which he was 
chosen fellow after taking his bachelor degree, 
and then head lecturer, dean, and catechist, 
while also acting as tutor. He was admitted 
master of arts in 1606 at the age of twenty-one. 
In becoming fellow he had "taken orders" in 
the Established Church, as was then the custom 
both at Cambridge and Oxford. Cotton was a 
brilliant scholar. "He was proficient in the 
logic and philosophy then taught in the schools; 
was a critical master of Greek; and could con- 
verse fluently either in Latin or in Hebrew." 
His power of application was remarkable, and 
he retained it with Httle remission to the end. 
"A sand-glass," we are told, "which would run 
four hours stood near him as he studied, and 
being turned over three times, measured his 
day's work. This he called 'a scholar's day.'" 
The same methodical habits clung to him in 
after years. He was careful and thorough in 
preparation for his Sunday work, and his sermons 
were always finished by two o'clock on Saturday 
afternoons; in allusion to which he once said, 
in rebuking the careless ways of others, "God 
will curse that man's labours who lumbers up 
and down in the world all the week, and then 
upon Saturday in the afternoon goes to his 
study." 

At twenty-three he made a reputation for 
himself with a funeral oration in Latin on Dr. 
Some, Master of Peterhouse. Cotton at this 



]l 




32 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

time came under the influence of William 
Perkins, the Puritan preacher at St. Mary's, 
Cambridge. For a while he tried to resist it, 
from the fear that if he became a godly man it 
would spoil him from being a learned man. 
But the influence prevailed. In 1609 he was 
again at St. Mary's, and his sermon on that 
occasion enhanced his reputation as a scholar 
and pulpit orator. When next he was announced 
to preach in St. Mary's Church the vice-chan- 
ceflor and heads of the University flocked to 
hear him. Expectation ran high. But this time 
it was no mere rhetorical display. "He now 
distinguished between the words of wisdom 
and the wisdom of words," a biographer quaintly 
observes; and instead of a showy sermon from 
an ambitious divine they heard only a plain 
and practical, and perhaps disturbing discourse 
on repentance. The audience were disappointed 
and Cotton "retired to his chamber much de- 
pressed." But the seal from that hour was 
set upon his life's work. This was the starting 
point along the road of his ministerial career. 
That he lost nothing of his pulpit power, but 
rather increased it as he advanced, we have 
abundant evidence. Six months after his Bos- 
ton appointment he took his B.D. degree, and 
the address he then dehvered at Cambridge 
marked him as a spiritual force and an intel- 
lectuafly able preacher. 

Bishop Barlow was at first against Cotton's 
election to Boston because he was a young man 




Photographed from the Boston Corporation Record Book 

Record of the Appointment of John Cotton as Vicar, 
June 24, 1612 

The record (second paragraph on the page) sets Jorth that Mr. Cotton, Master of 
Arts, is "now elected and chosen vicar of this borough" in the room and place of Mr. 
Wolles, the late incumbent, "for that Mr. Alexander, upon whom the vicarage was pro- 
posed to have been bestowed, hath yielded up the same," and .Mr Cotton was "to have his 
presentation forthwith sealed and to have the same stipend and allowance" that Mr. 
Wolles had. On July 1.3th it will be seen the presentation to the vicarage was sealed 
for delivery to Mr. Cotton, and the sum of 40/- was taken out of the treasury to bear his 
charges from Cambridae. while GO/- was given to Mr. Whitlow, "a Master of Artea 
whoe came hither to prenche from Cambridge." 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 33 

— he was seven-and-tvventy — and in the epis- 
copal opinion "unfit to be over such a factious 
people, who were imbued with the Puritan 
spirit." The Mayor perhaps had the same ob- 
jection to him; if so we may hope that he 
shared also the bishop's altered view; for, hav- 
ing been by some means "concihated" without 
Cotton's knowledge, the shrewd Dr. Barlow 
presently changed about and gave out that 
"Mr. Cotton was an honest and a learned man." 
And he was a zealous one too, and he made many 
friends, though not without tribulation. 

The trial soon came. There dwelt in Boston 
at that time one Peter Baron, son of a divinity 
reader at Cambridge, a physician whose energies 
were not absorbed by his profession, for he was 
an Alderman and Mayor two years before 
Cotton came, and he seems generally to have 
dominated his neighbours. Among other things 
he was a controversialist; he was full of the new 
notions about Arminianism, with which he had 
"leavened many of the chief men of the town," 
and for a while he sorely perplexed the new Vicar, 
a staunch behever in Calvin. The doctor was a 
difficult man to handle, and Cotton was cautious 
in setting to work, but he persevered, and he 
finally suceeded. "It came to pass that in all 
the great feasts of the town," he wrote in some 
personal reminiscences ^ — the festive-board was 



* In "The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared," London, 1648, 
some portion of which treats autobiographically of events at Boston 
soon after the writer settled in the town. 






THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 




a serious business in those days — "the chiefest 
discourse at table did ordinarily fall upon 
Arminian points, to the great offence of the 
godly ministers both of Boston and in neigh- 
bouring towns. I coming before them a young 
man, I thought it a part both of modesty and 
prudence not to speak much to the points at 
first, amongst strangers and ancients; until 
afterwards, after hearing of many discourses in 
public meetings, and much private conference 
with the doctor, I had learned at length where 
all the great strength of the doctor lay. And 
then observing such expressions as gave him 
any advantage in the opinions of others, I began 
pubKcIy to preach, and in private meetings to 
defend, the doctrines of God's eternal election 
and the redemption only of the elect; and the 
impossibihty of the fall of a sincere believer, 
either totally or finally, from the estate of grace." 
The result was victory for the young preacher. 
"Presently after, our pubhc feasts and neigh- 
bourly meetings were silent from all further 
debates about predestination, or any of the 
points which depend thereon, and all matters of 
religion were carried on calmly and peaceably; 
insomuch that, when God opened my eyes to 
the sin of conformity (which was soon after), 
my neglect thereof was at first tolerated without 
disturbance and at length embraced by the 
chief and greatest part of the town." The fact 
that in our own time Arminian tenets are almost 
universally accepted, while those of Calvin are 






a 






THE PURITAN FATHERS 35 

as generally discarded, detracts nothing from 
the dues of Cotton as a preacher and teacher 
in his day and generation. 

The seeds of nonconformity sown by John 
Cotton fell on congenial soil. Boston had long 
declared for Protestantism. Dr. Barlow, we 
have seen, referred to its ** factious people" 
who were "imbued with the Puritan spirit,'* 
and Sir John Lambe, Dean of Arches, later 
spoke of "the Puritan town of Boston." Lin- 
colnshire, when Cotton came, had been strenu- 
ously resisting the ceremonies imposed on the 
Puritan clergy. Reports of proceedings in the 
Ecclesiastical Courts, preserved in the old Aln- 
wick Tower at Lincoln, show that the father of 
Simon Bradstreet, the Puritan minister of Hor- 
bling, was repeatedly cited for nonconformity 
and at last openly defied the Court. Dr. John 
Burgess, another Lincolnshire rector, was de- 
prived in 1604 for preaching against ceremonies, 
and at the close of that year the ministers 
of the county petitioned King James with a 
defence of their brethren who were being sus- 
pended and deprived for the same offence. 
Thomas Wool, Vicar of Boston since 1599, was 
presented at the Archdeacon's Visitation in 
1606 "for that he weareth not the surplice: it 
hath been tendered unto him, and he sitteth 
upon it." Wool was preferred in 1612 to the 
rectory of Skirbeck, then in the patronage of 
Boston Corporation, and he died there in 
1618. 




% 




36 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

Let us look at the situation which had arisen. 
The Marian persecutions had sent a large number 
of Protestant-minded Englishmen for safety to 
Geneva and other places where the Calvinistic 
system prevailed, and they returned home strong 
upholders of the new doctrines and system of 
church government. They scorned the mild- 
ness of the Church's discipline, they disliked the 
episcopal form of government, they scented 
superstition in every rite and ceremony; and 
in particular, hke Vicar Wool, they despised 
the distinctive dress of the clergy, and indeed 
objected generally to the regulations of the 
Church. Some Puritans, under pressure, did 
temporarily conform; but the more advanced 
among them sternly refused to obey, and were 
prepared to suffer the consequences. But 
neither conforming nor nonconforming Puritan 
ever thought of leaving the Church because he 
disagreed with its doctrine or discipline; the 
bare idea of a permanent rehgious division would 
have seemed a confession of national and spiritual 
weakness too insufferable to be entertained. 
Ascendency, not toleration, was the aim and 
pohcy of all alike; and it gradually became 
plain that there was no possibility of Anglicans 
and advanced Puritans remaining in the same 
rehgious organisation : the question was whether 
the Church was to retain its ancient doctrine 
or be captured by the small, but zealous and 
influential, body of Puritans. 

The cause of the latter was probably repre- 





THE PURITAN FATHERS 37 

sented at Boston more or less throughout 
Elizabeth's reign. One of the Puritan antip- 
athies was to organs and chanting, and a stop 
was effectually put to organ music in Boston 
church. In August, 1590, the Corporation, 
without any legal license, ordered the great 
screen between the chancel and nave to be 
demoHshed, and found itself involved in trouble- 
some and expensive litigation in consequence. 
A suit was brought before the High Commis- 
sioners for ecclesiastical causes against George 
Earle, a former Mayor, Jasper Hicks, Mayor 
the following year, and Mr. Parrowe, members 
of the Hall, and Mr. Worshippe the Vicar, for 
taking down the loft wherein the organ stood in 
the church, "agreeably to an order of the Hall.'* 
They consented to set it up again; but as the 
organ had been destroyed and another was not 
built until 1713, the services must for one 
hundred and twenty-three years have been un- 
accompanied by instrumental music. William 
Armstead, who followed James Worshippe in 
1592, may have been one of the clergy banished 
by Elizabeth in 1593, for he ceased to be Vicar 
of Boston in December of that year. Of the 
proceedings of Samuel Wright, the next incum- 
bent, nothing is ascertainable; but Thomas 
Wool we know held decided views, for he sat 
upon the surplice. Mr. Alexander, "upon whom 
it was proposed to bestow the vicarage" in 
161 2, had been Mayor's chaplain two years, 
and his decision may or may not have been 



'V^ 



38 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

influenced by the religious complications of the 
time. At any rate he "yielded up the same," 
and to Boston came John Cotton. 

Other fundamental differences apart, the Puri- 
tans had accepted Calvin's notions as to the 
predestination of every soul to either salvation 
or damnation; whereas the Church had always 
held that God's absolute foreknowledge was 
still compatible with a free choice for every 
soul between good and evil. Cotton adopted 
the Puritan views in their most extreme form: 
(i) As to the authority of the Church, "the 
ministers of Christ, and the keys of the govern- 
ment of His Church, are given to each particular 
congregational church respectively," which made 
it "unlawful for any church power to enjoin the 
observation of indiff'erent ceremonies which 
Christ had not commanded," and also appar- 
ently made it unlawful for anybody to obey 
such commands (as thereby he would be im- 
plicitly recognising the authority which gave 
them), for he says: "I forebore all the cere- 
monies ahke at once, many years before I left 
England," and "When the Bishop of Lincoln 
ofi'ered me hberty" [i.e., to indulge his own will 
afterwards] "upon once kneehng at Sacrament 
with him ... I durst not accept his offer." 
This refusal was evidently based on the ground 
both that kneeling impHed the presence of 
Christ in the Sacrament, and also that obedience 
to an order implied recognition of the authority 
which gave it. (2) As regards the doctrine of 



^srr^z^i 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 39 

free will, we have seen that he admits he pub- 
licly preached, and in private defended, the 
theory of the impossibility of the fall of a sincere 
believer from the estate of grace. And from 
what is disclosed in the next chapter it will be 
apparent that in other directions the opinions 
he expounded were, viewed in the light of his 
day, startlingly novel and unorthodox. 



iP 




A CONTEMPORARY PICTURE OF 

COTTON — HIS PREACHING: 

"DEATH IN THE POT" — 

QUAINT SERVICES IN 

BOSTON CHURCH 




5»^ 



III 

A CONTEMPORARY PICTURE OF 
COTTON — HIS PREACHING: 
"DEATH IN THE POT" 
QUAINT SERVICES IN 
BOSTON CHURCH 

/I His Jaitb, perhaps, in some nice tenets might 

r/Ai Be wrong; bis life, I'm sure, was in the right. 

— Abraham Cowley, On the Death of Crashaw 

AMONG the manuscripts in the posses- 
f^\ sion of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln 
A \, Cathedral there has been preserved an 
account by a contemporary of the primary Visi- 
tation of the diocese by Bishop Neile in 1614 
which is of great interest and importance as 
setting John Cotton before us as he was when 
he had been two years Vicar of Boston. The 
report was probably drawn up by the bishop's 
registrar as the bishop went through the 
different archdeaconries of the diocese, which 
at that time extended from the Humber to the 
Thames, the Visitation being held at seventeen 
different centres. From Horncastle the bishop 
proceeded to Boston, where the preacher was 
Cotton, whom the registrar describes as "a 
young man, but by report a man of great 
gravity and sanctity of life, a man of rare parts 
for his learning, eloquent and well-spoken, 



44 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

ready upon a sudden and very apprehensive to 
conceive of any point in learning though never 
so abstruse," insomuch that, his gifts having 
won him such credit and acceptance, not only 
with his parishioners in Boston, but with "all 
the ministry and men of account in those 
quarters," grave and learned men were 'Svilhng 
to submit their judgments to his in any point of 
controversy, as though he were some extraor- 
dinary Paraclete that could not err." 

The registrar had ample opportunity of esti- 
mating the preacher's quality, for he says, "Mr. 
Chancellor and myself heard three of his sermons 
in two days, which three were six hours long 
very near." Sermons two hours long! They 
were well conceived, were delivered modestly 
and soberly, and well worthy of all commenda- 
tion; but — alas! for human imperfection, 
"there was mors in olla" — death in the pot — 
"every sermon to our judgments was poisoned 
with some error or other"; and the poison is 
traced out and labelled in many directions. 

Thus Cotton taught that the pagan world 
would not be condemned for want of behef in 
Christ, but only for moral transgressions against 
the law of nature, written in their hearts; that 
the office of apostle had entirely ceased, instead 
of being continued in the episcopate; that no 
man who was not a preacher could be regarded 
as a lawful minister; that reading was not 
preaching; that non-residence was utterly un- 
lawful; that no minister lawfully observed the 




^ 



A 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 



45 



Sabbath unless two sermons were preached by 
him; and that the deacons of the New Testa- 
ment were mere collectors for the poor. 

None of these things will seem very heinous 
in our eyes, whatever Bishop Neile and his 
officials may have thought of them. The ster- 
Hng worth of this young evangelist, with all his 
faults, so impressed the informant that he was 
fain to make what excuses he could for him. 
Puritan and nonconformist as he was, not out 
of factiousness, but on principle; openly ex- 
pressing his dislike of such ceremonies as the use 
of the cross in baptism and kneehng at the Holy 
Communion; heterodox in matters of church 
doctrine as well as a dissenter from its disciphne; 
the beauty of his holy and unblemished life and 
the sweetness of his character are fully recog- 
nised in this report. The cause of the preacher's 
erring is not set down to either pride or profit 
or wilfulness, but to lack of the right kind of 
light. Clearly, it was thought, here was a 
young man who needed watching: he was too 
modern, and, in the matter of his authors, in 
doubtful company. In view of its interest and 
importance, it will be well to give the full text 
of the Episcopal Commissaries' report. 

"17. Boston. M' Cotton M' of arts. 

"Text. I Cor: 12. 28. And God hath ordained some 
m y* church, as first Apostles, secondarily Prophets, 
thirdly Teachers, them y* doe miracles, after y' y^ gift 
of healing, helps, governours, diversity of tongues. 

"The Preacher is but a young man not past some 7 



z:^ 




46 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

or 8 yeares M' of arts; but, by report, a man of great 
gravity and sanctity of life, a man of rare pts for his 
learning, eloquent and well spoken, ready upon a suddaine 
and very app^hensive to conceive of any point in learning, 
though never soe abstruse, in soe much that those his 
good gifts have won him soe much credit and acceptance 
not only with his parishioners at Boston but with all the 
Ministery and men of account in those quarters, that grave 
and learned men out of an admiration of those good graces 
of God in him, have been and upon every occasion still 
are willing to submit their judgements to his, in any point 
of controversie as though he were some extraordinary 
Paraclete y* could not erre. M'^ Chancellour and my 
selfe heard 3 of his sermons in 2 dayes, w*^** 3 were sixe 
howers long very neer. This testimonie we are able to 
give of his sermons: good paines were bestowed in y" 
contriving of them, they were deliv^ed modestly and 
soberly and well worthie were they of all comendations, 
but that there was mors in olla, every sermon to o^ judg- 
ments was poysoned with some errour or other. 

"His text upon the Sunday morning was John i. 10. 
II, upon these words. The world knew him not, and his 
own received him not. In one of bis uses {w is a doctrine 
according to his method oj the third reflection) he delivered 
this dainty (and I thinke false) doctrine, viz.: That the 
world, i.e.. The Gentile and Pagan should not be con- 
demned or judged for their want of beleefe in Xt, but 
only for their morall transgression ag' the law of nature 
written in their hearts — whereas the scripture is plaine 
That he y* beleeveth not is condemned already. 

"In y* afternoon in his catechizing The doctrine he 
delivVd as a speciall note to discerne whether o' tem- 
porall goods were sanctifyed or noe, was (that I may use 
his own words) to hate suretiship, as though suretiship 
in noe respect were worthie to be numbered amongst the 
workes of mercy. And his resolute determination was. 
Howsoever suretiship in some case was valuable between 



ia 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 



47 



neighbour and neighbour: yet for a man to be surety for 
a stranger, it was utterly unlawfull. 

"Upon Monday o^ Visitation-day, the errours ob- 
served in his sermon were these — i . Speaking of the 
office of the Apostle, his determination was That the 
calhng was totally extinct, w*^** opinion of his I take to 
be erronious, for though we have noe such calling as the 
calling of an Apostle in regard of their mission (for y"' 
mission was extraordinary, as the Apostle saith, neither 
by men, nor yet Jrom men) yet the calhng remaineth in the 
church, in regard of their comission, for y^ church hath 
the power of y* keyes, as it was given to the Apostles, 
and, I take it, though every Presbyter hath not, yet the 
Episcopall office hath the very same extent of comission 
with the Apostles, namely to baptize and teach all nations, 
or at lest the Episcopatus (as S*^ Cyprian saith) in solido 
hath. 

"2 ^ Speaking of y^ name of Prophets, he distin- 
guished them into extraordinary and ordinary. The 
office of y* ordinary Prophets he taught to consist only 
in preaching of y* word, w** office was the same with 
the calling of o^ Ministers. This exposition being laid 
down for a foundation, his first doctrine o' collection was. 
That it was a flatt errour to thinke any man a lawfull 
minister w° was not a preacher, because y' office of the 
Prophet was to preach: intimating that the whole calhng 
of the Minister did consist only in preaching, avowing 
that none might chalenge to himself the name of a prophet 
or Minister but he only that had some speciall gift be- 
stowed upon him w*^** he had not before he was called 
to be a minister, und'^standing by that gift not the gift 
or facultie of his comission, by w*^ he received authority 
to execute in his calhng, but by y* gift he meaneth the 
gift of ability, by w*^*" the Minister is enabled to pforme 
more or lesse in y* act of his execution, w*^** gift we must 
needs acknowledge to be the gift of God, but yet such a 
gift as the ptie is supposed to bring with him and not 



48 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

then to receive it at y* time of his ordination: but he 
simplie attributing all to the gift of abihty plainly denied 
the non-preaching Minister to be a minister by ordinatioUt 
but by God's terrible providence (for y^ was his distinction) 
such an one as God might sett over his people in his anger 
and heavy displeasure, but not in mercy. 

"A Second collection was. That reading was not 
preaching. If he had said it had not been interp'tation, 
none would have gainsayd or opposed him; but his mean- 
ing was as we did gather it, as though reading were not 
one of ye meanes y*^ God hath appointed for man's salva- 
tion. His proof was Amos 8. ii, where God threatens 
a famine of hearing, w*^ text he ignorantly understood 
of y* famine of preaching and interpreting only. 

"A 3*^ collection was That Non-residencie was utterly 
unlawfull. To this purpose he abused a place in y* 
Prophet where God reproveth the idol-Prophet for leav- 
ing his place and substituting such an one in his roome as 
never had calhng from God to execute in y* calhng of a 
Prophet. This kinde of Non-residence I think was never 
maintained by any Xtian, neither doe I thinke any 
delinquent in this kinde in all o' nation, and go (sic) to 
small purpose was his allegation. 

"A 4*^"^ collection was he maintained it was not lawfull 
to let the Sabbath passe without 2 sermons, because 
Timothie must be instant in season and out of season. 
And strongly did he maintaine unseasonable preaching 
even now in these o"^ dayes, w° the seasonable course is 
noe wayes interrupted, nay w° all the seasonable occa- 
sions are not taken. For I doe not heare that any of his 
tribe will preach upon any holy day. 

"Many other things were dehvered by him not worth 
recording, as this, That by y^ order of Deacons in y' bible 
is understood none other office, but y' w** we now adayes 
call collectours for y* poore, as likewise by governours 
in his text he understood onely church-wardens. 

"The cause of this young mans erring thus I cannot 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 49 

thinke to be eyther pride or profit or wilfulnesse, but 
rather ignorance — for bis education was [erased] bis 
autbors be is most bebolding to (I understand) tbey are of 
ye newest stamp and tbe place oj bis dwelling stands better 
affected to this way tben tbe contrary." 

We have next a quaint description of 
the curious Sunday afternoon service con- 
ducted in those days in Boston Church; and 
the writer of the account compassionates the 
parishioners, as well he may, on its tedious 
and protracted character. For there were 
prayers with psalms after the lessons; the 
inevitable sermon two hours long came be- 
tween more psalms, one at each end; then 
the parish clerk called out the children to 
be catechised; next a long prayer by the 
minister of the town, followed by ques- 
tions "out of a catechism of his own mak- 
ing"; and then two more hours were occupied 
in explication of questions and answers. So 
that the framer of the report sets down his 
opinion that if they keep the same tenor all 
the year their afternoon worship will be five 
hours long, "where to my observation there 
were as many sleepers as wakers, scarce any 
man but sometime was forced to wink or 
nod." The text of the report concerning this 
elongated afternoon service follows : 

"VII. — Observations concerning the Sundayes Ser- 
vice in y^ Afternoon at Boston. 
"In ye Sunday Afternoone 
"(i) they have praiers w' Psalms after ye lessons: 



za^M 



50 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

" (2) After ye 2'*'^ lesson a psalme being sung the 
preacher of the town bestowes 2 howers in a sermon; 

"(3) After his sermon a psalme hkewise being 
sunge, the clerke of ye parish calls on certaine famihes 
for their youth to be catechized every one of which as 
they stand dispersed in the congregation answer alowd 
as they use to do at a Sessions Here Sir; 

" (4) After this calhng the Minister of the Towne makes 
a long praier; 

"(5) His praier being done, he turnes himself to the 
boy who must give him his first answer, and soe to the 
second and third, etc., for he knows beforehand every 
boy's station that answers him. By ye way, the ques- 
tions he moves are out of a Catechism of his own making, 
and not out of that in the book of Common Prayer; 

"(6) This being done, he spends two howers more in 
ye explanation of these his own questions and answers, 
soe that they keep the same tenour all the yeare which 
they did when we were with them; their afternoone 
worship, as they used to terme it, wil be five howers, 
where to my observation, there was as many sleepers 
as wakers, scarce any man but sometime was forced 
to wink or nod." 

Utterly intolerable as such a protracted service 
would be to a modern congregation, it suited 
the taste of that age, at least the Puritan section 
of it. Religious exercises of equal length were 
far from uncommon. On special occasions, 
such as fast days, they were of more tremendous 
length still. Philip Henry, father of Matthew 
Henry the commentator, was used on fast days 
to enter the pulpit at nine in the morning and 
never to stir out of it till about four in the 
afternoon, spending the whole of those seven 
hours in praying and expounding and singing 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 

and preaching, to the admiration of all that 
heard him. John How, Cromwell's chaplain, 
was almost equally unsparing of himself and his 
hearers on these occasions. He began at nine 
with a quarter of an hour's prayer; read and 
expounded Scripture for three-quarters of an 
hour; prayed for an hour; preached for another 
hour; and then prayed for half an hour. These 
exercises brought him to half-past twelve, when, 
beginning to feel exhausted, he descended from 
the pulpit and took a little refreshment while 
the public sang. At a quarter to one he was 
in the pulpit again and prayed an hour more, 
and preached for another hour, and then with a 
prayer of half an hour at about a quarter past 
three he concluded the service. 

When the spiritual faculties were strung up 
to such an unnatural tension is it at all aston- 
ishing that the reaction was equally violent, and 
that in a revolt against religious despotism all 
that was noblest and best in Puritanism — as 
exhibited in such a lovely character as John 
Cotton — was swept away, with its pettiness 
and its tyranny, in the current of the nation's 
hate, and that the gross license of the Restora- 
tion should have succeeded the gloomy fanati- 
cism of the Protectorate? Perhaps the evil was 
already past a remedy at the time this memorable 
Visitation was held. Certainly Bishop Neile 
was not the physician to heal it. 

About this time Mr. Cotton married Eliza- 
beth, sister of the Rev. James Horrocks, a noted 






52 THE PURITAN FATHERS 

Lancashire minister. It was soon after his 
marriage that he found he "could not digest the 
ceremonies*' of the Church, and his noncon- 
formity gave him trouble with the Court at 
Lincoln ; out of which he was helped by faithful 
and astute Thomas Leverett, his friend through 
much misfortune. For a while Cotton was 
silenced; but Mr. Leverett "so insinuated him- 
self" with one of the Proctors of the Superior 
Court, to which the Vicar was advised to appeal, 
that "he swore Mr. Cotton was a conformable 
man," and he was restored to Boston.^ There 
he laboured on for nearly twenty more years, 
and his ministry was marvellously successful, 
judged by his friends. 

1 In the quaint language of an early biographer, " He found himself 
healed of his ecclesiastical bronchitis, and restored to the use of his 
voice in the pulpit." 




t 



IV 

AN EPISODE OF BOSTON HISTORY — 
MUTILATION OF THE TOWN'S 
MACES — ATHERTON HOUGH 
AS IMAGE-BREAKER 

A deed of dreadful note. 

— Shakespeare, Macbeth 

TATE papers of the reign of James I. pre- 
served at the Record Office — documents 
which, Hke the Lincoln manuscript treat- 
ing of Bishop Neile's Visitation in 1614,^ have 
escaped the notice of the local historian — serve 
to give us a clearer insight into the state of 
feehng, civil and ecclesiastical, in Boston at a 
period when it was so largely influenced by the 
Puritan spirit of the times. They deal with the 
alleged act, which has been briefly referred to 
earlier in these pages, of treason and disloyalty 
to the throne in the cutting ofl" the crosses from 
the King's arms upon the maces belonging to 
the Mayor and Corporation and usuafly carried 
before that body on Sundays and festival days 
when they attended worship at the parish 
church. The discovery caused a great hubbub, 
and it reafly looked a very serious affair indeed. 
Information having been given by one David 

' An abridged copy of this document is also in the British Museum. 
Addl. MSS. 5853, fF. 249 sq. 





"C^ 



$6 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

Lewis to the Lords of the Privy Council, a Com- 
mission was issued to Mr. Anthony Irby, one of 
the Masters in Chancery, and to Mr. Leonard 
Bawtree, Sergeant-at-Law, bearing date the 
twenty-third day of March, 1621, in the nine- 
teenth year of his Majesty's reign, and afterwards 
a second Commission to the Sohcitor General 
dated May 18 in the same year, authorising 
them to examine into the case and report thereon. 
The information, as shown in one of their rephes, 
was "That the Maior of Boston, Mr. Thomas 
Middlecote, by himselfe or some others by his 
appointment or consent had cutt off the cross 
from the mace and caused yt to be carried before 
him soe defaced " ; such act being, according to 
one Abraham Browne, who was among the wit- 
nesses examined, "very evil done and a danger- 
ous matter," "a felonye or treason because yt 
was a defacinge of the imperiall crowne," an 
opinion in which the Privy Council seem to have 
concurred, judging by the importance they 
attached to the deed and the efforts they made 
to discover the doer of it. 

On the issue of the first of these Commissions, 
the examiners appear to have taken the evi- 
dence of ten persons, among them the two 
sergeants-at-mace, the two maidservants of the 
Mayor, an Alderman, and a churchwarden; and 
the result of their investigations is thus stated in 
their report, dated April 7 in the same year : 

"To Ityfie your Hono'^ wee have taken many exami- 
nacons of div'se psonnes and made what inquire wee 



THE PURITAN FATHERS S7 

possiblye cann whereby we finde theare be twoe sortes 
of maces in the towne of Boston, the one a lesser w*** 
only his Ma*'^ armes ingraven, usually and ordinarilye 
caryed by the Serjeants, the other greater with the ball 
and crosse on the toppe only caryed before the Maior to 
the Church on Sundayes and Thursdayes and solemn 
tymes. That uppon the first day of fFebruarye beinge 
Thursdaye the Maior having bene at Church those maces 
weare brought home whole and safe and layd in the 
Maior's house in the hall windowe next the street as they 
were usuallye, but there negligently left by the sergeants 
untill dynner tyme next daye, being Frydaye. In w'*^ 
meane tyme the toppes oj the crosses onely were cutt off 
from both the maces, the two crosse barrs thereof remayn- 
ing intyre: and soe by one of the mayde servants put 
into the cases and caryed into the chamber w^'^out any 
notice or knowledge thereof given by her to the Maior 
her master, and soe rested untyll the Sundaye morninge 
followinge, at w*^ tyme beeing brought down the ser- 
geiante espyed it: whereuppon both the Maior and his 
wife were much moved and angrye at the fait, but the 
sermon bell then ringinge and the Maior then going out 
of his house to the church, intending to examine yt after 
dynner as he did, went on and had them soe caryed the 
Thursdaye and Sundaye after before hym. But as soone 
as the Goldsmyth of Boston who was then at Lynn Martt 
came home he caused the same to be mended before any 
complaints made to his Ma*'^ or y' honors, and before 
he that did complayne did come from home: but by whome 
or for what end or cause the toppes of those crosses were 
soe cut off we cannot find oute or perceive, nor that the 
Maior was in any waye privye or consenting thereto 
being a man well deserving in his Ma^'^ service in the 
countrye, wherein he is a commissioner of the peace. 
And soe wee humbly rest yo' hono*^ to command." 

The result of this first Commission did not, 
as it seems, allay the suspicions of the Privy 




58 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

Council, or satisfy them of the loyalty and inno- 
cence either of the Mayor or the inhabitants 
generally, especially as the witnesses, accord- 
ing to a further statement of the informant 
Lewis, had been tampered with by the Mayor, 
and also by Mr. Irby the Commissioner, who 
was moreover a representative of the town in 
Parhament. 

In the Domestic Papers of the same reign, 
Vol. 120, No. 77, we have an amusing account 
of this supposed tampering, where one William 
Hill states that the said Lewis "sayed y* when 
Mr. S'jeant Bawtree did examine div'se of the 
examinates to any materiall pointe, Mr. Irby 
would answere before ye examinate and say 
*Thou knowest nothing of this businesse,* and 
yf any examinate did answeare any thing wh ** 
he tooke to be materiall, he would then say, 
*HouId thy peace, ffoole,' so y Mr. S'jeant 
Bawtree found fault w him for soe doeing.'* 
Also *'That Mr. Maior did attend in the house 
during all the tyme of the examinacon of the 
examinates and did conferr w^ every one or the 
most of them imediately before they went 
to be examined and also after they came from 
being examined. That Mr. Irby came downe to 
Mr. Maior and advised him privately to direct 
one Rich. Westland imediately before he went 
to be examined." It would appear also, from 
certain notes to these Domestic Papers^ that 
there was a suspicion that the informant Lewis 
had been himself bribed to withhold information 




f 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 

and compromise the matter in favour of the 
Corporation; for an entry says that *'Mr. Ant^ 
Ingoldsby, prson of fFishtofte, a verie inward 
friend of the Maior, told Lewis (he being desirous 
to borrow some money of the said Ingoldsby) 
that he would fetch him some from the Maior.'* 
A further entry states the nature of a communi- 
cation in Mr. Tilson's shop to Mrs. Jenkinson 
and others by Lewis, which was that "Having 
pformed the pte of a faithfull servant towards 
his maister (the King), he woulde now doe what 
service he coulde for the Corporacon of Boston " ; 
and a third entry speaks of "Lewis, his receivinge 
of ffive pounds of Camock at London, lykewise 
his sending to one Springe for ffortye shillings 
and a letter, which had been sente by the saide 
Springe to him to London to bear his charges 
downe"; the above-named persons Cammock 
and Spring having, according to another entry, 
been sent to London "to p'cure him to desist 
in his loyall service." 

Under these circumstances a second Commis- 
sion was issued addressed to the King's Solicitor 
General, and an examination holden as on the 
former occasion, the same witnesses for the most 
part appearing, with two or three others, among 
whom was the Mayor himself. But the result 
was as before, a perfect vindication of the 
Mayor's character against every imputation of 
disloyalty, and an acknowledgment on the part 
of the Commissioner that he could not discover 
the guilty person. "Upon the receite of this 



6o THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

letter," he says in his Report, *' I forthwith sent 
for the ptye who could give information therein. 
Middlecote himself and eleven others cae, but 
David Lewys who I find did first complaine of 
the misdeamo' cae not. All the rest I have 
examined and have sent the examinations to y' 
hon'. Out of them all I cann collect nothinge 
which cann fixe uppo Middlecoate but a p'sum- 
tion that he should be consenting thereto be- 
cause the maces were in his house. On the other 
side there are many circumstances which seem 
to excuse him of this foolish and peevish fact, 
for the maces were carried before him w' the 
crosses before this accident fell out: when he 
first prceaved it, he was or seemed to be much 
off'ended thereat: he caused the crosses to be 
new made as soon as the goldsmith retourned 
holme: and he used the maces afT they were 
mended againe. Yet doubtless I bolden it was 
done pposely, whosoevr was the actor of it. 
Soe humbly leaving that which is already done 
and what is fitt to be further done to yo"^ better 
judgement or to the further direction of the 
Lords, I humbly take leave and rest at yo' 
honors service ready to be commanded.'* The 
Report is signed "Ro. Heath," and is addressed 
"To the Right Hon"' S' George Calvert, Knight, 
Principall Secretary to his Ma*^^" 

So far, therefore, as concerned the civil aspect 
of the case, the result of the investigation was 
favourable and even creditable to the Mayor 
and to the town. But the affair had another 




'f^^^^^^m 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 6i 

side, which must now be looked into. Boston 
was at this time deeply imbued with the spirit 
of nonconformity under the ministry of Mr. 
Cotton, and the information of David Lewis 
was probably directed as much against the 
ecclesiastical authorities as against the civil — 
as much against nonconformists in the Church 
as against disloyalty in the council chamber. 
Apparently it was one of those many attempts, 
one of which was successful in the end, to drive 
Mr. Cotton from his office and check the prog- 
ress of his principles in the place. The cross 
as a rehgious symbol being especially distaste- 
ful to the feehngs of a Puritan, it was fair to 
suppose that it might be deemed so even when 
employed, as in the present case, for a secular 
purpose, and as a badge of a civil office. 

In this view the evidence of some of the wit- 
nesses examined before the Commissioners is 
exceedingly interesting, especially that of the 
parish clerk, the churchwarden, and the Town 
Clerk, Mr. Coney, Cotton's brother-in-law. The 
testimony of "John Jenkinson, blacksmithe, 
clerke, and sexton of the Churche of Boston" 
is thus reported: "Being examined he saythe: 
y* he himself did not cut of the toppe of the 
crosses fro the maces, neth^ dothe knowe whoe did 
yt nor by whose appointm* or consent yt was 
done, nor did ever heare whoe did it savinge y* 
he hathe heard himeself suspected to have done 
yt." And "Atherton Houghe gentleman one 
of ye churche wardens of ye towne of Boston 





62 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

being examined sayeth y* he neth' did cutt ofT 
ye toppe of ye crosses fro ye maces nor doth 
knowe who did yt nor by whose consent yt was 
done nor was privie to ye doinge of yt. But he 
conjesseth he did before that yere break of ye hand 
and arme of ye picture of a pope ^ (as yt 
seemethe) standing over a pillar of the outeside 
of the steeple very highe aboute the middest or 
mor of ye steeple, whch hand had a form of a 
church in yt, whch he did as he thought by 
warr* of ye injunctions made primo of Queene 
Ehz: wilhng all images to be taken oute of the 
walls of churches : and for yt he hard that some 
of the towne had taken notes of suche pictures 
as were in ye outside of ye churche." 

This confession is valuable as showing that 
a certain amount of the mutilation of churches 
is attributable to private individuals, acting as 
they thought under the sanction of the law. 
The popular idea which conveniently throws all 
the blame of such actions on the shoulders of 
Oliver Cromwell and his soldiery is not quite 
fair and Just. That they did do much injury 
is unquestionable, but these mutilations had 
probably been going on through many years 
at the hands of amateur iconoclasts like Mr. 
Atherton Hough. 

The evidence of the Town Clerk, Mr. Coney, 
is equally interesting and significant, because it 



1 The obnoxious image was nothing more dreadful than a figure of 
good St. Botolph, the church's patron saint. After weathering the 
centuries and surviving a fall, it still stands on a column on the south 
side of the tower. 





Photograph by Hackford, Boston 

Statue of St. Botolph, Mutilated in 1620 
Bv Atherton Hough 




jr^_ 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 63 

clears entirely the vicar, Mr. Cotton, of any 
complicity in the offence itself or sympathy with 
the motives which might have been supposed to 
lead to it. Being examined, Mr. Coney said 
*'That he hath herd the crosses of the two maces 
usually carried before the Maior of Boston were 
in hellary terme last cutt off, this examinant 
being then at the terme at London and soe cann 
not tell who cutt or broke them off, nor could 
ever learne since who did it or p'cured it to be 
done. But he saith that after his retourne 
holme, he hearing a report of what had been done 
and hearing that one David Lewys was gone 
up to London with a p'pose to complaine to his 
Ma^^ of this misdemeanor, he this examinant 
being desirous to make peace, the rather for 
that the suspected Vicar was this examinant*s 
brother in lawe, he of his owne mind w^'^out the 
privity of any other man moved Mr. Bennett 
the Customer at Boston" — the Controller of 
Customs for the port — "about a lett' to be 
sent to Lewys to dissuade him fro such com- 
plaint, and he incHning thereto, this examinant 
did drawe a letter to be sent to the said Lewys: 
and Mr. Docto' Worship, Mr. Dr. Browne, 
Mr. Bennett and Mr. Barfoote did subscribe 
their names thereto, and this examinant sent 
the same to Lewys, but it cae not to his hande 
because he was coe out of London before the 
messenger was coe theather. He saith further 
that the Vicar of the toivne Mr. Cotton of this 
examinant's knowledge did condemn the doing of 



-r^^ 



rtr 



^os^ 



64 THE PURITAN FATHERS 

the said fact and he never herd any one speak in 
justification oj it: and Mr. Cotton said in this 
examinant's hearing that they might as well refuse 
the King's coyne because crosses were on it as 
Jorbidd the crosses: and therefore this examinant 
is psuaded that Mr. Cotton never did conyv at 
the cutting of those crosses.** 

So that Mr. Cotton came through the business 
without hurt, and that Mr. Middlecott suffered 
no harm, is shown by the fact that he was 
knighted some time prior to September, 1625, 
when he is called Sir Thomas Middlecott. He 
was Town Clerk 1602-14 and Mayor once be- 
fore the episode we have been studying, in 161 3. 
Anthony Irby preceded Richard Bellingham in 
the recordership of Boston ; from 16 14 to 1620 he 
shared the representation of the borough in 
Parliament with Leonard Bawtree his co-Com- 
missioner; and in 1621 he succeeded Dr. Browne 
as Judge of the Admiralty Court at Boston. 
Thomas Barefoot was Vice- Admiral in 1602. 
Leonard and John Cammock were prominent 
townsmen and mayors of their day. 





CHURCH LIFE IN BOSTON — THE LIN- 
COLNSHIRE MOVEMENT — FAITH 
AND FLIGHT OF COTTON 





w 



I '.';' 



u 



Perplex d in faitb, but pure in deeds. 

At last be beat bis music out. 

Tbere lives more faitb in honest doubt. 
Believe me, tban in balf the creeds. 

— Tennyson, In Memoriam 

TTOHN COTTON had enemies as well as 
friends in Boston; but they prevailed not 
against him. His hospitality was a by- 
word among men ; his house was filled with 
students, some of them from Holland and Ger- 
many, who sat at the feet of a new Gamahel, 
and there were "taught according to the perfect 
manner of the law of the fathers"; and people 
resorted to the town from miles around to hear 
him preach. 

He was not a heroic figure, this John Cotton. 
"He was of medium stature, and inchned to 
corpulency." But the fascination of his per- 
sonality is sufficiently accounted for. "His 
voice," says the biographer, "was not loud, 
but clear and distinct, and was easily heard in 
the most capacious auditory. His complexion 
was fair, sanguine, clear; his hair was once 
brown, but in his later years white as the driven 




?J1 



ik^ 



68 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

snow. In his countenance was an inexpressible 
sort of majesty, which commanded respect from 
all that approached him." The portrait matured 
with years but the Boston picture, as far as 
we can realise it, is pleasant to contemplate. 

Cotton had a good friend in Dr. WiKiams, 
now of Lincoln — the same bishop who years 
after, when John had been in America for 
nearly a decade, wrote to Nicholas Ferrers, 
"You see the times grow high and turbulent, and 
no one knows where the rage and madness of 
them may end; I am just come from Boston, 
where I was used very coarsely." But those 
days were not yet. WiHiams was at this time 
basking in the favour of James I, and having the 
King's ear, he spoke a word into it for John 
Cotton; and the result was that he was allowed 
to go on without interruption, despite his non- 
conformity. Poor Samuel Ward, minister of 
Ipswich, could not understand it. "Of all men 
in the world," he moaned, "I envy Mr. Cotton 
of Boston most, for he doth nothing in way of 
conformity, and yet hath his hberty; and I do 
everything that way, and cannot enjoy mine." 
Plainly, he had not a bishop with the King's 
ear! 

It is really surprising, considering the severity 
of the times, that Cotton should have enjoyed 
so much hberty during the twenty years he was 
Vicar of Boston. The views he held and openly 
expressed were highly dangerous, for did he not 
teach that, according to the Scripture, bishops 



i^ 



d 



¥/j 



I 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 69 

were appointed to rule no larger a diocese than 
a particular congregation, and that the keys 
of ecclesiastical government were given by the 
Lord to each separate church? He maintained 
that neither ministers nor people were subject 
to the jurisdiction of cathedral bodies. "Which 
made me," he says, *'then to mind not only a 
neglect of the censures of the Commissary 
Court (which bred not a little offence to them 
and disturbance to myself), but also to breathe 
after greater hberty and purity, not only of 
God's worship, but of Church estate." 

Arising out of this attitude of the Puritan 
vicar we have the astonishing fact that within 
the larger parish community a gathered church 
was set up, some scores of pious persons in the 
town forming themselves into an evangelical 
church-state by entering into covenant with 
God and with one another *'to follow after the 
Lord in the purity of His worship." This wider 
liberty may have been possible because John 
Williams, the Bishop of Lincoln from 1621 on- 
wards, was a man who had himself considerable 
leaning to Puritan modes of thought, and, like 
his successor. Dr. Laney, "could look through 
his fingers"; and who, moreover, being for the 
first five years of his appointment Lord Keeper 
of the Privy Seal, left his diocese during that 
period pretty much to itself. 

Cotton's objections to the ceremonies of the 
Church were for a long time rooted and com- 
plete. It was in the episcopate of Dr. Moun- 



M: 




>\ 



70 



THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 



tain, subsequent to 161 7, that, when suspended 
on special complaint made against him to the 
King, he refused to save himself — refused also 
proffered preferment — by yielding "to some 
conformity, at least in one ceremony, at least 
once." By request he explained his doubts 
about kneeling at the sacrament to Dr. Moun- 
tain and the Bishop of Salisbury at Westminster. 
He did so freely, and his evident sincerity won 
him sufficient sympathy to secure his restitu- 
tion. So far from being unkindly dealt with, 
he was treated with quite unusual leniency. 
Mountain's successor, Dr. WilKams, showed 
him even greater indulgence; but, as Jealous 
eyes were set on the bishop himself, in 1625 he 
called Cotton's proceedings in question. 

A letter in the small and beautiful handwrit- 
ing of the Vicar, sent in reply to Dr. Williams* 
remonstrance, is still in existence which places 
in a strong light the Christian simpHcity and 
candour of Cotton's character, and is of im- 
portance as showing that his opinions in regard 
to ceremonies had undergone some modifica- 
tion. The writer reminds the bishop that, when 
his cause first came before him, he "wisely and 
truly discerned that my forbearance of the 
ceremonies was not from wilful refusal of con- 
formity, but from some doubt in my judgment, 
and from some scruple in conscience," and so 
granted him time "to consider further of these 
things, for my better satisfaction." He tells his 
correspondent that his patience "hath not bred 




. 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 

in me any obstinacy in mine own opinion," and 
says he has of late seen "the weakness of some 
of those grounds against kneehng which before 
I esteemed too strong for me to dissolve." 

An ingenious argument employed against 
him had been that the ceremonies he doubted of 
were "nowhere expressly forbidden in Scrip- 
ture." This apparently made an impression on 
Cotton; anyway he avows his reluctance to set 
up his own view against "the received judgment 
of so many reverend fathers and brethren in the 
church." He assures the bishop that the in- 
dulgence allowed him has not stiffened him "in 
any private conceit"; and, defending himself 
against a charge of having "emboldened our 
parish to inconformity," he goes on to make a 
statement which throws an interesting hght on 
the church hfe of the period in Boston. 

"The truth is, the ceremonies of the ring in marriage, 
and standing at the Creed, are usually performed by 
myself, and all the other ceremonies of surplices, cross 
in Baptism, kneeling at the Communion, are frequently 
used by my fellow-minister in our church, and that with- 
out disturbance of the people. The people on Sabbaths, 
and sundry other festival days, do very diligently and 
thoroughly frequent the pubhc prayers of the Church 
appointed by authority in the Book of Common Prayer. 
Neither do I think that any of them ordinarily, unless 
it be upon just occasion of other business, absenteth 
himself. It is true indeed that, in receiving the Com- 
munion, sundry of them do not kneel, but as I conceive 
it, and as they express themselves, it is not out of scruple 
of conscience, but from the multitude of communicants, 
who often so do throng one another in this great congre- 





i^ 



72 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

gation that they can hardly stand, much less kneel, one 
by another. Such as do forbear kneehng, out of any 
doubt in conscience, I know not — how very few they be, 
I am sure in comparison, nullius numeri. That divers 
others come from other parishes for that purpose (to 
receive without kneeling) is utterly unknown to me, and 
I am persuaded, utterly untrue. All the neighbouring 
parishes round about us, ministers and people, are wholly 
conformable. Once indeed, as I heard, one of the in- 
habitants of a neighbouring parish, coming to visit his 
wife, who then nursed a gentleman's child in our town, 
did here communicate with us; and whether from his 
not kneeling, or from some further cause, I know not; 
but as I heard, the Court being informed of him, did pro- 
ceed severely against him. But otherwise the man, as 
I have since been certified, hath always been used to receive 
kneeling, both before and since. Yet his case being 
further bruited abroad, when well known might easily 
breed such a suspicion, and afterwards a report, which 
in time might come to your Lordship's ears, that divers 
did come from other parishes to us for this purpose to 
receive inconformably. But your Lordship is wise, 
easily discerning between a report and evidences." 

Cotton, we see, admits only conformity him- 
self to the use of the ring in marriage and stand- 
ing at the Creed; the other ceremonies which 
he names were observed by his fellow-minister. 
He disproves here the charge of inciting the 
laity to nonconformity; but we have his admis- 
sion, in the autobiography which has been 
aheady quoted, that "when God opened my 
eyes to see the sin of conformity, my neglect 
thereof was at first tolerated without disturb- 
ance and at length embraced by the chief 
and greatest part of the town." The writer 



. . 



S 







Photograph by Hopkinson, Billingborough 

Sempringham Manor House 
{Modern residence on the old site) 






THE PURITAN FATHERS 73 

concludes his letter to the bishop by asking to 
be allowed *'yet further time for better consider- 
ation of such doubts as yet remain behind." 
Signing himself "Your Lordship's exceedingly 
much bounden orator, John Cotton," he adds 
to the address on the outside "This with 

speed." ^ 

The clouds were now darkening fast in Church 
and State, and the gathering storm brought to- 
gether the friends who, being in Lincolnshire in 
1627, fell into discourse about the New England 
scheme with such practical result. These meet- 
ings took place in Boston itself, or at Tattershall 
or Sempringham, Lord Lincoln's family seats, 
and were the resort of Vicar Cotton and Thomas 
Dudley; Isaac Johnson and John Humphrey; 
Simon Bradstreet (son of the stout Puritan 
minister of Horbling, who gave so much trouble 
to the Ecclesiastical Courts), next to Dudley the 
Earl's confidant and adviser; Richard Belhng- 
ham, the Recorder of Boston; and Thomas 
Leverett and Atherton Hough, Boston leaders 
who, with Dudley, this year joined with Lord 
Lincoln in resisting the King's forced loan, for 
refusing to subscribe to which the Earl was sent 
to the Tower. 

Roger Williams, the ardent Welshman, chap- 
Iain to Sir Wilham Masham, was also identified 
with the Lincolnshire movement, and he speaks 
of riding with John Cotton "and one other of 
precious memory. Master Hooper, to and from 

»AddI. MSS. 6394, f. 35. 



74 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

Sempringham," Roger as they rode explaining 
why he could not use the Book of Common 
Prayer as Cotton did, and Cotton pleading the 
excuse that he "selected the good and best 
prayers in his use of that book, as Sarpi did in 
his using of the Masse-book." We have here a 
first ghmmering of that after-controversial con- 
flict between the irrepressible Williams and 
the rulers of the New Boston. But that stage 
was not yet, and Cotton, we see, was already 
conciHatory. 

To these conferences came, two years later, 
John Winthrop from Groton in Suffolk, en- 
countering by the way the inconveniences of 
travel in those days; for he says of the journey 
"My brother. Downing, and myself riding into 
Lincolnshire by Ely, my horse fell under me in 
a bog in the fens, so as I was almost to the waist 
in water." And the good man appreciated his 
peril; for he says "The Lord preserved me from 
further danger — blessed be His name." It 
was shortly after this adventuring, with Tatter- 
shall or Sempringham as the goal, that Winthrop, 
with eleven others, including Sir Richard Sal- 
tonstall, Isaac Johnson, and Thomas Dudley, 
signed the compact at Cambridge giving the 
control of affairs to those members of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay Company who were going out to 
the Colony, of which Winthrop was elected the 
first resident governor. 

John Cotton had many troubles and trials. 
There were things from which the indulgence of 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 73 

bishops and the kindly mediation of friends 
could not protect him. These were sickness 
and death. All through the year 1631 he was 
prostrated with the ague. This interval of 
ministerial inactivity was passed with Lord 
Lincoln at Tattershall. While also the Earl's 
invalid guest, Mrs. Cotton died of the malady 
which had stricken down her husband; and we 
read of a sum of money **paid to M' Mayor 
for so much expended by him about M" 
Cotton's funeral." 

A year later Mr. Cotton remarried. On April 
25, 1632, at Boston Church, "John Cotton, 
cleark" took to himself in wedlock Sarah Story, 
a widow, who had been a great friend of his 
first wife's; but they were fated not to remain 
long together in Boston. 

The end of Cotton's ministry in the town was 
brought about in an indirect, but none the less 
effectual, manner. What the schemes of his 
enemies failed to achieve was accomplished at 
last by accident. Designs for molesting him 
for his nonconformity had so far been frustrated 
by the vigilance and discretion of Thomas 
Leverett; but about this time a "dissolute 



>» 



person m Boston, who had tasted the cor- 
rectional quality of the local magistrates and 
bore them a grudge in consequence, sought to 
revenge himself by informing against them in 
the High Commission Court. He declared that 
they did not kneel at the Sacrament or observe 
other ceremonies enjoined by law. Told that 




kJ<< 



THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

he must put in the minister's name, the in- 
formant replied "The minister is an honest 
man and never did me any wrong." Under 
pressure, however, he put in Mr. Cotton's name, 
and letters missive were at once despatched to 
summon the Vicar before the Court. 

Much exercised in mind. Cotton took counsel 
of various friends as to whether he ought to 
stand or flee. Among others he put the case 
before that quaint and witty old Puritan, John 
Dod, of Fawsley, who answered suo more, "I 
am old Peter, and therefore must stand still 
and bear the brunt; but you, being young Peter, 
may go whither you will." The choice was 
between flight and imprisonment, and Cotton 
chose the former. But he called together the 
heads of the congregation and "offered them to 
bear witness to the truth I had preached and 
practised amongst them, even unto bonds," if 
they conceived that to be the right course for 
him to adopt. They did not, but persuaded 
him, as Cotton wrote when more happily placed, 
from New England, "to withdraw myself from 
the present storm and to minister in this country 
to such of their town as had been sent before 
thither, and such others as were wifling to go 
along with me or to follow after me." ^ So he 
resigned the hving of Boston and fled. 

This was in May, 1633. We know how Lord 

^ Letter dated Boston, N. E., December 3, 1634, from Mr. Cotton 
to a minister at home, stating the reasons for his and Mr. Hooker's 
removal to America. 



* 




1 






THE PURITAN FATHERS 77 

Dorset, who dropped into the church when at 
Boston on fen drainage business and was won by 
Cotton's preaching, kept the promise he then 
made and exerted himself with the powers on 
his behalf, and how the vengeful Laud — who 
more than once was heard to exclaim "Oh that 
I might meet with Mr. Cotton!" — frustrated 
his amiable efforts; how Lord Dorset informed 
Cotton that if he had been guilty of "drunken- 
ness, uncleanness, or any such lesser fault" he 
might have been pardoned, but that as he 
was guilty of Puritanism and nonconformity the 
crime was unpardonable; and how consequently 
he advised him to flee for his safety. 

Before leaving. Cotton, broken in health and 
spirits, penned that touching letter resigning his 
charge into his bishop's hands. As to how he 
has spent his time and course he must ere long 
give account at another tribunal, but he takes 
leave to say to his lordship that the bent of his 
course had been "to make and keep a threefold 
Christian concord amongst the people, between 
God and their conscience, between true-hearted 
loyalty and Christian hberty, and between the 
fear of God and the love of one another." He 
honours the bishops and esteems many hundreds 
of the divines of the Church, but, while prizing 
other men's judgment and learning, their wis- 
dom and piety, in things pertaining to God and 
His worship, he feels he must hve by his own 
faith, not theirs. Therefore, since he cannot 
yield obedience of faith, he is willing to yield 



(W 



78 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

patience of hope. His Master, he says, **who 
began a year or two ago to suspend (after a 
sort) my ministry by a long and sore sickness, 
the dregs whereof still hang about me, doth 
now put a further necessity upon me, wholly to 
lay down my ministry and freely to resign my 
place into your Lordship's hands. For I see 
neither my bodily health nor the peace of the 
Church will now stand with my continuance 
there." So he asks the bishop "to accept my 
place as voyd," and to "admit thereto such a 
successor as your Lordship shall find fit and the 
patron (which is the Corporation of Boston) 
shall present to you therefor." He adds that 
"the congregation is great and the church duties 
many, and those many times requiring close 
attendance." 

Cotton had very good reason for saying this. 
In his time trusts imposed on the Corporation 
by the Charter of Phihp and Mary and the 
endowment of Alderman Fox were disregarded, 
the staff of priests being reduced from three 
to two. Cotton, in 1614, was voted an extra 
allowance, "part of which was heretofore em- 
ployed towards the maintenance of a preacher 
to assist the Vicar, which is now saved." He 
always preached at the election of Mayor, and 
when that functionary was installed into office, 
and when at home at the funerals of the principal 
people; and in fact was doing double duty most 
of the time he was at Boston. That his ministry 
was successful we have abundant testimony. 



\ 




"Agreed thai Mr. Cotton the viccar, haviny been at great charge with the repayrynge 
of the viccaridge, and being about to take his degree of Batchelor of Divinity and un- 
provided of money in respect of the great charge he hath been at iti repayring the said 
viccaridge, and being also a man of very good desertes, shall hare given him as a gratuity 
by this house towards the charges he shall be tnforced unto about the taking of his 
degree" the sum of £20, which was taken oat of the treasury and delivered to him. 



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"^^1^^^-— -^^ 




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Photographed from the Boston Corporation Record Book 

Entry of April 22, 1614 

".Vr. Cotton the viccar being a worthye man and well deserving both for his learning 
and life, and his maintainnncc of the viccaridge eery small and tiro little to maintaine 
him, it is therefore agreed that he shall have for the further auginintation of his living 
the sum of £iO payed him yearlye during the pleasure of this house," out of the erection 
lands, "part whereof was hitherto employed towards the maintainance of a preacher to 
assist Mr. Cotton, and now is saved." 





THE PURITAN FATHERS 79 

Mr. Pond assures us, in his Notes on the Norton 
Memoir/ that a great reformation was wrought 
in the town by John Cotton. ** Profaneness was 
extinguished, superstition was abandoned, and 
religion was embraced and practised among the 
body of the people; yea, the Mayor and most 
of the magistrates were now called Puritans.'* 

Hutchinson in his "History of Massachusetts" 
says of Cotton that "Many strangers, and some 
too that were gentlemen of good quality, resorted 
unto Boston, and some removed their habita- 
tions thither on his account, whereby the 
prosperity of the place was much promoted." 
The historian speaks of Mr. Cotton's hospitality, 
"wherein he did exceed all that I ever heard 
of. His heart and his door were ever open to 
receive all that feared God, especially godly 
ministers, and ministers driven into England by 
the persecutions then raging in Germany; these 
he most courteously sustained." 

Mr. Whiting, one of his biographers, describes 
Cotton's incredible labours and says: "He was 
distinguished for candour, meekness and wisdom, 
and was exceedingly beloved of the best." His 
teaching, however much it may have offended 
some, found no lack of appreciation ; for, in the 
records of successive gratuities and augmenta- 
tions of the Hving, Cotton is referred to as "a 
man of very great desertes" and as "a worthy 
man, and well deserving both for his learning and 

1 Norton's "Life and Death of Cotton," reissued with Notes by 
Enoch Pond in 1834. 




^-/•r 



M 



y^^^^si 



80 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 




life'*; while his pains in preaching and cate- 
chising are declared to have been great. We 
know he was famous as an expositor; he was 
midway on a second exposition of the Bible 
when eventually his hfe closed. 

At an assembly held in the old Guildhall at 
Boston on July 22, 1633, before the Mayor, 
Aldermen, and Common Council, two letters 
were laid before the house: one from John 
Cotton yielding up his place of being vicar, which 
"his friends, this house" accepted, and one from 
John, Lord Bishop of Lincoln, by the hands of 
Thomas Coney, the Town Clerk, stating that 
on July 8 the said Lord Bishop did, at his 
house in the College of Westminster, accept 
Mr. Cotton's resignation of his vicarage. So 
ended the most memorable ministry Boston has 
ever known. 

We may be sure that that was an affec- 
tionate leave-taking which Cotton took of the 
only other child of his parents, Mary, wife of 
Thomas Coney, whose duty it now was to tell 
the Corporation that the bishop had declared 
the vicarage void. Coney and Mary Cotton 
were married in 161 8, and a year later their 
son John was born. For many of its eventful 
years Thomas Coney was conspicuous in the 
public affairs of Boston. He was steward of 
the borough in 161 3, when he acted as Town 
Clerk for Sir Thomas Middlecott during his 
mayoralty; and he became Town Clerk himself 
in 1620, and so continued for twenty-seven 



^ 



'■•3 






.4 U 



4>* H,y Htf-*; ».» .(t«i».»™ Sip.^ij-,- ^«»»-~~ ^ Uii-rS—.r^lijf.U^^ 



«4«>><i_jra. . 







Photographed from the Boston Corporation Record Book 

The Resignations of John Cotton, Atherton Hough, 
AND Thomas Leverett 

Record of 22nd July, 1633, stating that "at this assembly Mr. John Cotton, late vicar 
of Boston, yeilded upp his place of being viccar by his letters dated in July (1633) 
which his friends this house have accepted." Also entry of resignation of Atherton 
Hough and Thomas Leverett as Aldermen of the borough; and further an intimation 
from the Bishop of Lincoln "by the hands of Mr. Thomas Coney of this toune" (Cotton's 
brother-in-law) that on July Sth Mr. Cotton had resigned the vicarage to the bishop, 
who had accepted the same and declared the vicarage to be void, and signified to the 
Mayor and burgesses that they might when they pleased "present some able person 
thereunto"; which, as the next entry shows, they at once did by electing Mr. Anthony 
2'uckney thereto. 





THE PURITAN FATHERS 8i 



years, or to within two years of his death, being 
"much employed in the business of the Cor- 
poration." His son, John, stepped into his 
official shoes. Then there was Cotton's cousin, 
Dr. Anthony Tuckney (son of the Kirton min- 
ister), who succeeded him as Vicar, and at the 
time of his flight had been Mayor's preacher at 
Boston four years, following Mr. Edward Wright, 
appointed in 1618. Tuckney, like Cotton, had 
resided in the Earl of Lincoln's family, and was 
his correspondent after the exodus from Boston. 
The resignation was followed by the issue of 
writs, and if Mr. Cotton meant to leave the 
country it must be at once. Escape was not 
easy. State agents were vigilant, and here was 
no mean quarry, if only they could lay hands 
on him. But the fugitive was too quick for 
them. He reached London, and there, for a 
space, was concealed by John Davenport, Vicar 
of St. Stephen's. Then, changing his dress and 
adopting for the time being a fictitious name, 
he made his way to the Downs, where by arrange- 
ment he went on board the Griffin, a ship of 
some three hundred tons. That was in the 
middle of July, two months after his resigna- 
tion was written and a week from the date of its 
formal acceptance. With him were Thomas 
Leverett and Atherton Hough, Aldermen of 
Boston, who resigned at the same time that 
Cotton did, and then Joined him in London. 
They brought with them their famifies, and 
Mrs. Cotton was of the company, too. 




V\A 



82 THE PURITAN FATHERS 

The sailing of the GrifFin, with her full load 
of nearly three hundred passengers, was a skil- 
fully managed affair. She out-manoeuvred the 
officers of the High Commission Court, who evi- 
dently suspected the truth and were lying in 
wait for her at the Isle of Wight, where they 
expected she would touch. But she spread her 
canvas wings and sailed straight away for the 
West, passing to the south of the island; and, 
if the hirehngs of the Court beheld her at all, 
the sight would not comfort them much. 

It was in the year of Cotton's flight that the 
poems of George Herbert were pubhshed, and 
there is ground for the conjecture that the pro- 
posed emigration of Cotton and other eminent 
ministers suggested the poet's well-known lines : 

Religion stands on tiptoe in our land. 
Ready to pass to the American strand. 

This too was the year when the Privy Council 
order was issued to stay certain ships in the 
Thames in which distinguished opponents of 
the Crown were supposed to be embarked for 
New England. 





ministered at Old Boston; that vast pile, 
with its majestic tower rising to nigh three 
hundred feet above the level fen, to be seen over 
a third of the county and from Norfolk across 
The Wash; crowned with a graceful octagonal 
lantern whose hght and height were a mark for 
travellers inland as well as for mariners at sea: 
a fire-capped pillar to guide at night, a looming 
cloud to direct by day; a glorified type of the 
Enghsh parochial church, the most impressive 
in the kingdom, surpassing in the grandeur of 
the architecture of its tower any Enghsh cathe- 
dral; an abiding memorial of the great period 
of mediaeval prosperity, built on the site of the 
old monastery founded by St. Botolph, "in a 
wilderness unfrequented by men," and later 
destroyed by the Danes. 

High up in the lofty tower was in Cotton's 
time a huge clock-bell, shaped hke a saucer and 
weighing some four thousand pounds. It was 
suspended in the tower lantern above the leaden 



86 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 




roof of the belfry, "for the better and more 
audible sound thereof." Upon it were struck 
the hours of the day and the holy hours of the 
Church, and it could be heard for six or seven 
miles around. On this bell were many quaint 
old verses, which John Cotton may have read 
if ever he chmbed so high; but they are lost to 
posterity. At five o'clock in the morning the 
ponderous bell was rung to call all who had to 
perform it to their daily toil; and at eight each 
night its deep notes told that the day's work 
was done, and summoned to well-earned repose. 
In the second year of Cotton's coming to Boston 
one John Tomhnson was admitted a freeman 
gratis on condition that during his life he would 
keep the clock and chimes in order, and "all the 
ironwork and wires belonging to the same," 
and the chambers and the bell-Iofts clean. 
This is the first mention of the clock and chimes 
found in the local records. Two new bells were 
hung in 1617; one of them bore the admonitory 

verse : 

All men that heare my mourniful sound. 
Repent before you lie in ground. 

These two bells remain in the peal to this day. 
The great "saucer" and the other bells then in 
the steeple were repaired in 1627. The bells 
were rung from the stone gallery running round 
the second story of the tower b}^ means of blocks 
and pulleys at openings in the belfry walls. 

Let us enter Cotton's church, through the 
imposing south porch, where we see cut in 





THE PURITAN FATHERS 87 

the inner arch the mark which the bishop at 
the consecration anointed **with chrism, in the 
form of a cross." Over the porch was a room 
which in Cotton's day was used as a school **for 
the teaching of petty scholars'*; but in 1635, ^^ 
the request of his successor, Dr. Tuckney, it 
was ordered by Archbishop Laud, when on his 
metropolitan visitation at Boston, to be turned 
into a parish library. It was the irony of fate 
that a man who loved intellectual darkness 
rather than light, and who, we have seen, 
crushed the liberty-seeking Cotton's last hope 
of escape from the persecution which drove him 
forth, should have sanctioned the establishment 
of the first free library at Boston. But fate 
duly adjusted the anomaly, for at a later 
date. Archdeacon Goddard on overhauling the 
library "threw out many books which he de- 
nominated trash." Beyond being a limited liter- 
ary museum it has served no useful purpose; but 
a lasting monument to Cotton and his work, 
keeping alive and perpetuating his memory, has 
been reared in the chapel adjacent. On the 
wall near this chapel (which so long served as 
a vestry, but is now transformed and used for 
daily service) is a queer old painted oak board 
bearing the device of a death's head with a 
heart in the mouth. What John Cotton thought 
about it can only be surmised; but he would 
not quarrel with the accompanying lines, which 
relate to one Richard Smith who died in 1626 
(possibly of the family of Nicholas of that ilk, 



I 



88 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

who gave the wrong casting votes at Cotton's 
election as Vicar), and if whimsical, savour of 
the versification of the times : 

My corps with Kings and Monarchs sleeps in bedd; 

My soule with sight of Christ in Heaven is fedd: 

This lumpe, that Lampe shall meete and shine more 

bright 
Than Phoebus when hee streames his clearest light. 

The sun at midday, if that is what was meant, 
left nothing to be desired in the way of metaphor; 
but the memorial is dingy at this far-off date, 
though well preserved. 

We pass into the great church itself, lofty and 
spacious in nave and aisle; with its flat panelled 
ceihng and painted shields, its high-backed pews 
and wide expanse of colour-washed wall ; and its 
seats made for the "Mayor and company" in 
1 60 1, which in 1627 were furnished with lock, 
keys, and bolt. Its "orgayne-Ioft'* stands 
"above Mr. Mayor's quire" across the chancel 
arch, but destitute of the means of musical 
accompaniment, because twenty or more years 
before Cotton came "the great orgaynes," which 
may have been disorganised and certainly 
offended Puritan taste, were directed to be 
sold "for the benefit of the church," and even 
the loft itself had been pulled down, but the 
High Commissioners, on suit being brought, 
saw that it was set up again. ^ The screen of 

* Years later the organ-loft was removed from the Parish Church, 
and strange to say it now, or part of it, is in St. Mary's Roman Catholic 
Church at Boston, Mass. 



m 



i\ 




Photograph by Hackjord, Boston 

Altar Tomb of Dame Margery Tilney 





Photograph by Hackford, Boston 

Miserere Seats in the Choir Stalls 
Believed to date Jrom the last quarter oj the Fourteenth Century 



in 
111 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 89 

the nave separates the pews from the great 
open space at the west end, the town arms from 
over the gates of which, with their fine ironwork 
and metal woolpack, now adorn the entrance of 
the old Grammar School yard. The hexagonal 
EKzabethan pulpit is of dark-coloured oak, with 
fluted Ionic columns, semi-circular arches on 
pilasters, rich embossed carving, and sounding- 
board above it (now gilded and standing on a 
pillar, and with the sounding-board, for long 
absent, restored at the Sexcentenary celebration 
of the church), where Cotton preached his ser- 
mons two hours long. One also notes the altar 
tombs, one that of Dame Margery Tilney, great- 
grandmother of Anne Boleyn, bearing the Tilney 
arms and with the effigy upon it of the said 
Dame Margery, who, as Leiand quaintly says, 
"layid the first stone of the goodly steple" of 
the church, and "lyith buried under it"; and 
wonders at the chancel with its double row of 
stalls, with canopies and misereres, perhaps the 
finest examples extant of mercantile religious 
munificence. 

There is nothing more curious about it all 
than the connection with the church of the 
Corporate body and its ordering of the arrange- 
ments. Of this we have had some insight. But 
fifty years before Cotton's appearance the Cor- 
poration were busy seating themselves, the 
Mayor and Aldermen in one place, and the 
Common Council in another, and the fiat went 
forth that "none of the House" should "talk in 



^M^ 



90 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

the church, to the ill example of others." Later 
they were to sit, not in the quires, but "in the 
loft in the church." When Cotton had been 
gone this long while, we find this wilful but 
interesting body setting aside a sum to pay "for 
cloth and mending the Mayor's seat, which was 
cut off and stolen away." That was probably 
when his Worship occupied a sort of dais, pil- 
lared and corniced, against a column of the nave 
facing the pulpit opposite. Then their wives 
were introduced, for we have an order to the 
Chamberlain to "line" the seats "where the 
ladies of the aldermen and common-council sit," 
and the Aldermen's wives are called "alderesses." 
They appear nevertheless to have behaved 
themselves, for there is no further resolution 
prohibiting prattle in church. 

Externally, the church had a different ap- 
pearance in Cotton's day. There were two 
buildings adjoining it on the south side, one 
a vestry, originally an oratory or private chapel, 
abutting on the chancel with its httle priests' 
door, and to the west of it Taylor's Hall; while 
on the north side of the chancel, near the stair- 
case leading to the organ-loft, was another old 
chapel, and at the west end of the aisle stood a 
charnel-house, once an oratory. These excres- 
cences were removed in the next century, when 
the churchyard was enlarged to the southeast 
by the sweeping away of the town gaol and the 
Ostrich publichouse, and the levelling of "Half- 
crown Hill," used so freely for the burial of the 



i 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 91 

poor (at half-a-crown per head) that the rising 
mound obstructed the lower windows of the 
hostelry! No wonder the plague raged periodi- 
cally in the old days. Once at least it visited 
Boston during Cotton's stay; that was in 1625, 
when the Fair usually held on St. James' Day 
(July 25) had to be abandoned for fear of 
spreading the contagion. Bounding the church- 
yard on the water-side to the west was Shoe- 
makers' Hall, and a wharf with shops and 
warehouses, overlooking the swiftly flowing 
Witham, then unchecked by the modern Grand 
Sluice. 

And what an unassuming place was the old 
Vicarage, where Cotton was an hospitable host, 
and where the students gathered to profit by 
his teaching. Standing off" Wormgate with an 
entrance from the churchyard, beneath the 
shadow of the mammoth tower, the modest 
manse nestled cosily among the trees of the 
enclosed garden-orchard. One can picture still 
the timbered and tiled brick building of two 
stories with its intersecting beams, its case- 
ments glazed with diamond panes, hooded 
doorways, peaked gable, pointed attic windows, 
and short squat chimneys. Within the par- 
sonage house Cotton would in his idle moments 
(if he ever had any) make an antiquarian study 
of those curious arms, carved on an oaken door 
and a panel over the mantelpiece, of the mitred 
abbot of Bardney, who had owned a fishery and 
more solid possessions in Boston and is reported 



^i^^: 



92 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

to have helped to build the manse. But Cotton 
we know had more absorbing studies. Here he 
read the Fathers and the Schoolmen, and his 
Calvin much beloved, finding that "he that has 
Calvin has them all"; just as in later years he 
dehghted to sweeten his mouth "with a piece 
of Calvin*' before he slept. Hard by, at the 
"north church stile in Wormgate,'* stood (and 
still stands) the ancient church house, then the 
residence of the Grammar Schoolmaster (doubt- 
less a good neighbour and famihar friend), 
where in pre-Reformation days doles collected 
for the purpose were distributed to the poor 
and needy. Strange to say, the house has re- 
turned in a new way to its old use, for it is a 
Poor-law reheving office to-day. On the other 
side of the Vicarage, forming a quadrangle, was 
the venerable residence of the Pacy family, 
once a nunnery; and though the building has 
long since disappeared, you may still see pre- 
served near its site the same stone bust of a 
man tugging at his beard that leered down from 
its niche above the entrance upon John Cotton 
when perchance he passed that way. 

That glorious fabric the Parish Church took 
a lot of maintaining, and the wherewithal was 
not always easy to find. During Cotton's 
ministry work of a kind was frequent about the 
chancel and other parts; but resources were 
very limited, and in 1626 something hke a 
crisis arose. In that year it was found that 
"the large, spacious and magnificent church of 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 93 

St. Botolph's" was "able and fit to contain all 
the whole people and congregation of Boston," 
which was literally the truth, for the inhabi- 
tants numbered less than three thousand. The 
church was, however, "in so great need of re- 
pairs" that the people "were not able to supply 
the defect thereof." And so on petition Bishop 
WiHiams authorised the puIHng down of the small 
church of St. John, which had not been used 
for two hundred years, and the materials thus 
obtained were used for repairing Boston Church. 
Some of the timber was also employed in patch- 
ing up the Town Bridge, which in this year was 
"in great decay" and in danger of falHng. It 
was the successor of the old bridge which fell 
into the river on a Sunday in March, 1556. The 
mending in 1626 was of little use, for the bridge 
had to be taken down three years later, and while 
a new one was being erected passengers were 
ferried across the w^ater by a Corporation boat; 
so that when John Cotton hied him to the west 
side of the town, to visit parishioners in Gowt 
Street or Fordend Lane, he would have to use 
the ferry-boat. The new bridge was opened in 
1 63 1, the year he was stricken down with ague. 
We can picture the good man on one of these 
pastoral excursions passing the stragghng 
Market-place, with its staithes, its "fish stones" 
or stalls, and its Market Cross with tall, slender 
shaft, approached by flights of steps hard by 
the house and garden footing Gaunt's Lane, 
whose rents Cotton afterwards enjoyed for life 




94 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

by right of his marriage with widow Story. The 
House of Assembly on the river side of the 
square was built the year before he came to 
Boston. 

The ** great feasts of the town" of which 
Cotton has spoken, and which he ornamented 
by his presence, were sumptuous and ceremo- 
nious entertainments held at the Guildhall, 
including May Day, Lady Day, Admiralty 
Court, Quarter Sessions, and Court Leet or 
rent day dinners. On these occasions the Cor- 
poration and borough officials, with such guests 
as the Mayor invited, assembled together; and 
prominent figures were the Recorder, the 
Marshal of the Admiralty and the Chamber- 
Iain, the sergeants-at-mace and the sergeants- 
at-arms. At the fairs and marts the Mayor 
and his company were escorted by a dozen at- 
tendants attired in a species of military garment 
or loose cassock called "mandelions," having 
the town's arms (three ducal coronets on a sable 
shield, supported by mermaids ducally crowned, 
with crest **on a woolpack, a ram couchant'*) 
worked upon them "in yellow sarsaeye"; and 
as many merchant porters in the warden's 
livery, carrying halberts; with four constables 
to assist in maintaining order and preserving 
the peace. Then there were the paid and per- 
spiring musicians, wearing liveries bearing "the 
ancient badge of cognizance"; and we may take 
it that they earned their salaries. The whole 
was a picturesque display. 



LWi^ 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 95 

But though it treated Cotton well in return 
for his beneficent ministry, Boston had at this 
time sorely dechned. Five years before Cotton 
came it petitioned Parliament to be placed in 
the list of "decayed towns," with the evident 
object of escaping inconvenient exactions. We 
have no proof that the prayer was answered; 
and eight years later, in 161 5, we find the town 
asking for relief in respect of a levy of provisions 
for the Crown. The port, we are told, possessed 
"few fishermen"; but there were plenty of 
dishmakers, fret-workers, weavers, and followers 
of other trades in the borough. 

The preceding winter had been very severe, 
with much frost and snow and great loss of 
cattle and sheep, and early in 1615 there was 
a disastrous flood "and overflowing of the 
ground," though this was not so bad as the 
visitation of 1571,^ when the district was devas- 
tated by a mighty tempest and flood and next 
year Elizabeth granted Boston a license to 
export grain "for the relief and succour of the 
borough, the inhabitants thereof being greatly 
impoverished and almost utterly declined, as 
wefl by reason of the scarcity of traffic of mer- 
chandise as by the great damage and hurt hap- 
pened to their port, bridge, wharfl's, staithes, 
and sea banks through the great violence and 
inundation both of the salt and of the fresh 
waters"; and this license was renewed in sub- 
sequent years. Camden said of Boston in 

*This great tide was the subject of Jean Ingelow's noted poem. 




''<3:D. 



96 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

1586 that it was "handsomely built," and 
"drives a considerable trade." Still times were 
hard, for in 1587, as the records tell us, because 
of the "great dearth and hard year," the Mayor- 
elect was allowed three-quarters of wheat by the 
Corporation and was not to be subject to a 
charge "for any feastynges or dyet" at the four 
sessions of the peace, "but only for the recorder 
and four justices, and the town clerk." And 
so the evidences of scarcity and economy con- 
tinue. But the town picked up somewhat be- 
fore Cotton left it. There came the mandate 
that no more thatch should be used in the con- 
struction of houses, which were to be built of 
timber, stone, and tile; and in 1623 the Corpora- 
tion ordered "two dozen links to be bought for 
the town," which was an unmistakable sign of 



progress 



! 



Things at one time were very different, and 
Cotton must often have hstened to the story, 
handed down from father to son, of that great 
period of mediaeval prosperity which Boston 
once enjoyed. As early as the eleventh cen- 
tury the famous Hanseatic League, or merchants 
of the Steelyard, estabhshed themselves on The 
Wash. Formed by a combination between 
Hamburg and Lubeck as a trading Guild, and 
including within a century no fewer than sixty- 
six cities and forty-four other confederates, the 
League was at first no more than an associa- 
tion for mutual protection against piracy; but 
ultimately it became a ring of the most gigantic 





THE PURITAN FATHERS 



97 



and comprehensive character, with offices and 
warehouses and residences in all the chief 
centres of trade in England.^ The League had 
its Steelyard in Boston, and many of its members 
took up their abode in the town. They were 
popularly known as " Easterhngs," either be- 
cause they came from the country lying east 
of Boston, or from their trade being renewed 
each year at Easter; and they bore such a good 
character for honesty, their weights being just 
and money unsweated and unchipped, that it 
was made a stipulation that debts should be 
paid with Easterling coin, and hence comes our 
still existing word, "sterhng" money. 

Well, Boston, under the Easterlings, became 
the emporium of commerce for East England; 
and in 1205, the year after it received its charter 
from King John, Boston paid the largest amount 
of the tax called the quinzeme (a fifteenth part 
of the movable goods of merchants, taken for 
the use of the State) of any port in the kingdom 
save only London. Seventy or eighty years 
later we find Boston paying twice as much duty 
on chief exports as London did, and more than 
a third of the entire duty paid by the whole 
kingdom on these goods; while in another 
decade it was one of the nine ports from which 
alone wool might legally be exported. During 
the thirteenth century its great annual Mart 

'Until 1853 the Steelyard in Thames Street, London, remained the 
property of the Senates of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck, who held it 
as heirs of the old Hanseatic League. 



:^. 



98 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

or Fair, to which the marketing world flocked 
by land and water, sprang into existence. And 
in 1369 the Staple was removed from Lincoln to 
Boston, which remained a Staple-town until the 
dissolution of the rehgious houses and mer- 
cantile Guilds in the sixteenth century brought 
the mediaeval system of trading to a close. 

But long before that time its prosperity had 
waned. Leiand gives a definite cause for this. 
He says that in the reign of Edward IV a mer- 
chant of Boston, Humphrey Littlebury, killed 
an Easterling there, and the Bostonians behaved 
so badly about it that the Easterhngs in disgust 
left the town and took their merchandise else- 
where, so that in his time (1530), though the 
Steelyard houses still remained, they were ** little 
or nothing at all occupied." There were no 
doubt contributing causes to this decay. Once 
the recognised waterway to the east, with a 
river navigable up to Lincoln and connecting 
with the Trent and its tributary streams, the 
channel through which many counties poured 
their produce and received their foreign goods, 
Boston had now lost this sea-carrying monopoly 
owing to the growth of other ports on the east 
coast and the partial diversion of commerce to 
the west. Its haven and outfall also were in a 
bad state, and the Charter of Admiralty given 
it by EHzabeth over the Norman Deeps, with 
the power of levying duties and other privileges, 
did little to improve things, until we see the 
town as it was in Cotton's day. But the place 





COTTON'S BOSTON MEN— THE NEW 

LIFE O'ER SEAS — PERSECUTIONS 

AND PUNISHMENTS 






JJ 



The lantern of St. Botolpb's ceased to bum 
When from the portals of that church be came 
To be a burning and a shining light 
Here in the wilderness. 

— Longfellow, The New England Tragedies 

OHN COTTON on his way out to the West 
did not lack good company, and the voyage, 
if long, was the less lonely on that account. 
He had his wife with him, and, on August 1 2, 
a month after the saihng, his first child was born 
on the broad Atlantic Ocean; it was a son, and 
they gave him the fitting name of Seaborn.^ 
Cotton refused to baptise the infant at sea be- 
cause, being no longer the minister of a congre- 
gation, he did not hold himself empowered to 
administer the sacraments. In Winthrop's 
"History of New England" we find the reason 
for this refusal thus set forth: **Not for want 
of fresh water, for he held seawater would have 
served: i, because they had no settled congre- 
gation there; 2, because a minister hath no 

^ On the outward voyage of the Mayflower, thirteen years before, a 
son was born to Stephen Hopkins, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, and they 
called him Oceanus. 



t^ 



104 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

power to give the seals but in his own congre- 
gation." In other words — and this is a good 
example of the conscientious exactitude which 
characterised the Puritan period — Cotton held 
that the priestly office ceased with the severance 
of the pastoral bond, and must be renewed on 
the acceptance of another call; nor, until so 
renewed, could the individual officiate in per- 
forming church functions. The boy accordingly 
was named only after his father had been in- 
stalled as teacher of the church in New Boston, 
and so had gained the right to baptise him. 

Among the passengers carried by the Griffin 
were many friends, including men who had 
profited by Cotton's counsels and shared the 
anxiety of his trials at Old Boston. There was 
Thomas Leverett, of whom we have heard, one 
of an old Lincolnshire family. Leverett served 
a seven years* apprenticeship to Mr. Anderson, 
a Boston tradesman, and on October 29, 1610, 
he was married to Anne Fisher in Boston 
Church; and the baptisms of their children 
entered in the parish registers give the names 
and dates Jane Leverett, August 9, 161 3; 
John Leverett, January 9, 1616; and Anne 
Leverett, January 9, 161 9. John accom- 
panied the rest of the family on this momentous 
voyage, and rose to high place in New England, 
as we shall see. He married Hannah Hudson, 
who went out to the Colony two years later, in 
1635. Jane Leverett married Israel Addington. 

Nine years after marriage, Thomas Leverett 




'</,.t^.J^^t^ ^rSei.j;g2„.,^ tf^;^^c/a^ ^U^ rf V/^*^ *^^-*"^ 









Photographed from ike Busli-iii Cu/jjui at cu/i iitcoiU Hook 

Record of the Appointment of Thomas Leverett as Coroner, 

MAY I, 1624 

"At this assembly Mr. Edward Tillson, Corroner of this borough, being made and 
chosen Alderman 0/ this borough, desirelh to be disengaged of the said place and hath 
yeilded upp the same, and this house hath accordingly accepted thereof and they have 
elected and chosen Mr. Thomas Leveritt to be the Corroner of this borough in the room, 
and place of the said Mr. Tillson, whoo is to vacate the said office." 






.■f., .If ^> 



Photographed from the Boston Corporation Record Book 

Record of the Admission of Thomas Leverett to the Freedom 
OF the Borough, January 18, 1618 









Photographed from the Boston Corporation Record Book 

Record of the Election of Thomas Leverett to the Town 
Council, March 7, 1620 

" Also at this assembly Mr. Thomas Leverit is elected one of the Comon Counsaill, 
and hath taken his oath acordinglie." 









•-'I -r^T* 



^ttff- 



J'b^rth I bto 





Photographed from the Boston Parish Register 

Record of the Marriage of Thomas Leverett to Anne Fisher, 

1610 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 105 

was made a freeman of Boston. In the follow- 
ing year, 1620, he was elected to the Common 
Council; he became coroner of the borough in 
1624; and was appointed an Alderman in 1632. 
We know how useful he was to John Cotton at 
Boston, a skilful protector and faithful friend 
always, shrewd and successful in the legal busi- 
ness which took him to the courts on his Vicar's 
behalf. 

Another passenger in the GrifFm was Ather- 
ton Hough, that enthusiast who in 1620, when a 
churchwarden, broke off the hand and arm of 
what he conceived to be "the picture of a pope," 
but what in reality was a statue of St. Botolph, 
on a tall pillar of the great church tower. 

Thomas Leverett and Atherton Hough took 
up their freedom of Boston together in 1619. 
Mr. Hough was elected to the Council later the 
same year; he was made an Alderman in 1627, 
and the next year became Mayor. In the 
parish registers may be seen the record of his 
marriage, on January 9, 161 8: "Atherton 
Hauigh and Ehzabeth Whittingham, widdow"; 
and there also is the date of baptism of their 
son Samuel, November 23, 1621. These friends 
threw up their official appointments without 
hesitation in order to accompany Mr. Cotton to 
America. Aldermen in these days are of all 
people supposed to consider their own town 
the best possible dwelhng-place. Aldermen of 
the seventeenth century probably thought the 
same, and in any case this leaving of Old Boston, 




io6 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

with its ties and associations, must have been 
a wrench. But it was a time for the sundering 
of bonds, as well as for their enforced endurance. 
Atherton Hough's wife and young son were 
of the party. Also, if history speaks truth, was 
that great man Richard BeHingham, afterwards 
Governor BeHingham, Recorder of Boston from 
1625, and its member of Parhament from 1628, 
a position to which Old Boston elected his 
father, Francis BeHingham, in 1603. Recorder 
BeHingham's resignation was received in No- 
vember, 1633; but he may aH the same have 
gone out with Cotton. AHen says he did not 
sail for New England untH the foHowing year. 
Certainly Winthrop does not name him as 
being one of Cotton's feHow-passengers, though 
he may have been among the other men on 
board who are aHuded to generaHy as **of good 
estates." However, if he did not take passage 
in the GrifFm he foHowed very soon after; and 
once in the new country, this stern and upright 
man became a power in the land. AHen's 
description of him is vague. BeHingham, he 
says, was "a native of England, where he was 
bred a lawyer." This is not very informing. 
He belonged in fact to Yorkshire; but his rela- 
tives found Hving at Kilby near HuH at a later 
period bore the old Lincolnshire name of Good- 
rick. That he was "bred a lawyer" goes with- 
out saying. "It was always mentioned as a 
part of Mr. BeHingham's character," wrote 
Hutchinson, "that he hated a bribe." This is not 





Photographed from the Boston Corporation Record Book 

Record by which Atherton Hough (spelt "Hallgh") was 
"made free" of the Borough, May 22, 16 19 

" And hath taken his oath for his freedom, together icith his oath of supremacie and 
allegiance." 






/) 









Photographed from the Boston Corporation Record Book 

Record of the Election of Atherton Hough on August 21, 
1619, TO the Common Council 

" Tn the room and place of Robert Jenkinson deseased, and hee hath taken his oath 
acordinglie." 







OF Atherton Hough to Elizabeth 

ITTINGHAM, 1618 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 107 

more than might have been expected of one who 
was Recorder of Boston and for some time its 
representative in Parliament. 

Not that he was set beyond temptation. The 
emoluments of his legal office were not great. 
In 1625 the salary of the Mayor's cook at 
Boston was raised to £6/13/4, and this princely 
sum equalled the fee which the Recorder was 
paid yearly out of the manor of Hallgarth. But 
Belhngham came off best in the end, for the 
office of cook was abolished in 1629. One 
would be loath to accept these disbursements as 
evidence of the relative value of the learned 
Recorder and the Mayor's cook in the eyes of 
the old Bostonians. But they are full of sug- 
gestion; even as the Bostonians themselves 
loved to be filled with the good things of the 
table. Pecuniarily, the Mayor was not so 
easily satisfied as the Recorder, for his salary 
in 1629 was reduced to "fifty pounds, with 
capons, and sugar rents, and weathers"; 
which no doubt was esteemed a great hardship, 
seeing that five years before the Mayor was 
allowed eighty pounds, "besides the ordinarie 
allowance of wine, sugar, capons and weathers," 
which was simply lordly! But times were evi- 
dently bad when the salary and the perquisites 
of the civic office suff'ered diminution, for in 
that year, 1629, his Worship was "tyed to make 
the feast at May-day only," to which, however, 
he had to invite "the Aldermen, Common 
Council, the Recorder; the Town Clerk, and 




io8 THE ROM ANTIC STORY OF 



all their wives," Bellingham thus being of the 
company. Out in the free America this grim 
Puritan had a strangely strenuous, pecuHarly 
successful hfe; and the pictures of him drawn 
by Hawthorne in "The Scarlet Letter" have 
perpetuated the fame of his name. He was 
succeeded as Governor of Massachusetts by 
John Leverett. 

Then what a familiar sound to transatlantic 
ears has the name of Quincy. It was borne 
across the sea by an emigrant from Fishtoft, 
hereabout, who went with John Cotton, and 
from this Old England villager, Edmund Quincy, 
sprang in the fulness of time Presidents of the 
United States. Little less honour, in American 
Nonconformist hearts, belongs to the name of 
Hutchinson, long prominent in the life of the 
Lincolnshire Boston. The fugitives to New 
England were the Alford branch of the family, 
intimates of Cotton and Mr. Coddington, and 
consisted of an aged widow, four sons, and a 
daughter, wife of the Rev. John Wheelwright. 
Wilham, the eldest son, was the husband of a 
celebrity, **the sainted Anne Hutchinson," Haw- 
thorne calls her, daughter of the Rev. William 
Marbury. WilKam Hutchinson and his brother 
Richard took out adult famihes to America. 
Edward, the third son, and his nephew, Edward, 
son of Wilham, accompanied John Cotton; the 
rest of the family followed a year or two later. 
The tragedy which annihilated most of this 
family is referred to later on. The lad Edward, 



III 



i 



"^ 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 




who sailed in the Griffin, saved the name from 
extinction in Massachusetts, and was ancestor 
of Governor Hutchinson, who wrote a history 
of the Colony. Then Cotton took out other 
notable men. There was the Rev. Thomas 
Hooker of Chelmsford — "Son of Thunder'* 
they called him — the first minister of Cam- 
bridge, Mass., and one of the founders of Con- 
necticut. Others were Matthew Allen, who 
settled first at Cambridge, and removed with 
Hooker to Hartford in 1636; William Pierce, a 
man of good estate; sturdy John Haynes, a 
friend of Hooker's from Essex, a governor in 
the years to come of both Massachusetts and 
Connecticut; and the Rev. Samuel Stone, one 
of the first ministers of Hartford. 

The voyage occupied nearly seven weeks, 
and, on September 4 the Griffin cast anchor 
off the New Boston. ^ Could the full story be 
told, it would doubtless be found that these 
arrivals in New England included many more 
Lincolnshire men than those who have been 
mentioned. But of the passengers carried by 

^The event is thus chronicled by Winthrop in his Journal: "Sep. 4. 
The Griffin, a ship of three hundred tons, arrived (having been eight 
weeks in the Downs.) In this ship came M''. Cotton, M'^, Hooker and 
M'. Stone, ministers, and M"^. Peirce, M"^. Haynes (a gentleman of 
great estate), M^. HofFe and many other men of good estates. They 
got out of England with much difficulty, all places being belaid to have 
taken M^. Cotton and M'^. Hooker, who had been long sought for to 
have been brought into the High Commission; but the master being 
bound to touch at the Wight, the pursuivants attended there, and in 
the meantime the said ministers were taken in at the Downs. M''. 
Hooker and M"^. Stone went presently to Newtown, where they were 
to be entertained, and M'. Cotton stayed at Boston." 



no THE ROM ANTIC STORY OF 

the Griffin no complete list was preserved, and, 
in the absence of that evidence, it is impossible 
to decide this question. 

It is, however, possible to speak more definitely 
with regard to the conjecture which has been 
put forward that a number of the colonists of 
Dorchester were also from the neighbourhood 
of Old Boston. They were not. Between the 
Dorchester men and the Boston men there 
appears to have been friendly rivalry in the 
matter of first establishing and naming a settle- 
ment in the new country. The Dorchester 
emigrants went out in a large and well-appointed 
ship by themselves. They arrived a fortnight 
sooner than the rest of Winthrop's fleet, and 
fixed upon Mattapan (now South Boston), 
called it Dorchester, expecting it to become the 
principal town. But that honour was reserved 
for Winthrop's party and for Old Boston. 

Still, the settlers already named were certainly 
the more prominent of those who went out. 
One other remains to be added to the roll; it is 
the Rev. Samuel Whiting, who followed Cotton 
to America early in 1636. Whiting was a native 
of Boston and a member of a distinguished local 
family which traced back its connection with 
the place to the fourteenth century and its 
participation in the government of the town to 
1590, when John Whiting was a member of the 
Corporation; his son John, father of Samuel, was 
Mayor of Boston in 1600 and 1608; John 
Whiting, born in June, 1592, brother of Samuel, 





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THE PURITAN FATHERS 

was Mayor four times, in 1626 and 1633 and 
again in two subsequent years, this being the 
only instance on record of any person filling the 
office so often previous to the Municipal Act of 
1835; another brother, James, also served as 
Mayor, while Robert Whiting was a sergeant- 
at-mace and Marshal of the Admiralty, offices 
which he resigned in 1631 and 1632 respectively. 
Alderman Richard Westland, their brother-in- 
law. Mayor in 1632 and again eleven years later, 
loaned money to the Massachusetts Colony 
and had six hundred acres of land allotted him 
there in discharge of the debt. 

Samuel Whiting was born in November, 1597, 
and after graduating at Emmanuel College, Cam- 
bridge (where he had for his class-mate Anthony 
Tuckney, afterwards Vicar of Boston), he took 
orders in 1620 and went into Norfolk, where he 
was first chaplain to Sir Nathaniel Bacon and 
then minister at King's Lynn. Being a strong 
Puritan, he refused to conduct service in the 
manner prescribed and complaints of his non- 
conformity were made to the Bishop of Norwich, 
who threatened him with the law. Instead of 
being prosecuted, however, he was presented 
to the hving of Skirbeck, Boston, by Sir Edward 
Barkham, one of the borough representatives 
in Parliament (and predecessor in the seat of 
Richard Belhngham), who had purchased the 
advowson from the Corporation. Whiting was 
instituted to the hving on February 18, 1625. 
He was then in his twenty-eighth year. While 




112 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

at Skirbeck he contracted a notable marriage. 
It was not the first time he had led a bride to 
the altar; but neither the name of the bride nor 
the situation of the altar is known to history. 
Anyway, in 1629 he was a widower; and on 
August 6 of that year he was wedded in Bos- 
ton Church, presumably by John Cotton him- 
self, to Elizabeth, daughter of OHver St. John, 
own cousin of Ohver Cromwell. The entry in 
the parish registers gives the names "Samuell 
Whiting, gent, & Elizabeth Saint Johns." 

Here in a little ceremony in Boston Church, 
a simple and modest function without doubt, 
are grouped names which make one pause — 
Cromwell, St. John, Cotton, Whiting. Oliver 
St. John, hke the Earl of Lincoln and some of 
the Boston men, had himself stood out as a 
resister and been fined by the Star Chamber for 
refusing to pay "benevolences," those forced 
loans or gratuities taken without consent of 
Parhament, with or without the condition of 
repayment; an illegal practice which provoked 
memorable contests in the reigns of James and 
Charles I. Whiting, in turn, was a resister in 
matters ecclesiastical. The King's Lynn trouble 
recurred, and a few years after his marriage to 
Elizabeth St. John he gave up the hving at 
Skirbeck, to which Jeremiah Vasyn, a Gram- 
mar School usher, was instituted after him on 
December 16, 1635. Mr. and Mrs. Whiting 
shipped for America, landing at New Boston on 
May 26, 1636, and, in the November follow- 



S^-^ 



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I I 













x^r^*f^^ yyif*^ ^^:. 



*■ ** • : 



Photographed from the Boston Parish Register 

Signature of John Whiting, Four Times Mayor 




Photograph by Hackford, Boston 

Skirbeck Church, of which Samuel Whiting was Rector, 

I 625- I 636 



^ 






.»»,«t»^JLl£>/f4'^, 






y ^ ^ ~ — 






'A 







Photographed from the Boston Parish Register 

Record of the Marriage of Samuel Whiting to Elizabeth 

St. John, 1629 




rS 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 113 

ing, the erstwhile Rector of Skirbeck was in- 
stalled as minister at another Lynn, the one 
in Massachusetts. 

The advent of John Cotton and his men was 
hailed as a great event in the New Boston and 
the whole Colony. The joy and satisfaction 
were universal. Cotton was on all hands re- 
garded as pre-eminently "the man" for Massa- 
chusetts. He was in his forty-ninth year when 
he stepped ashore from the GrifFm, and the stren- 
uous hfe then begun extended, strange to say, 
over almost exactly the same period that he had 
passed as Vicar of Old Boston. His friends in 
exile had longed for his coming out, and both 
he and his brethren had the best of welcomes. 
Nor were these purposeful Puritans without 
their pleasantry, for now they said, they had 
the chief essentials of existence: "Cotton" for 
clothing, "Stone" for building, and "Hooker" 
for fishing. Probably the three distinguished 
ministers who had just landed in Boston had no 
knowledge of this harmless playing upon their 
names. They were there for sterner things, 
though the commonplaces of life concerned all 
alike in those early days of the Colony, with its 
hardships and privations which everybody had 
more or less to share. But this was not the 
worst. A time was fast approaching when tears 
of oppression would drown out all humour, the 
mother wit would become a dead faculty, and 
the laughter heard in the land would echo mad- 
ness rather than mirth. 




114 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

When Cotton came John Winthrop had been 
chosen Governor for the fourth time, and Dudley 
deputy-Governor. There would be much to tell 
on either side when those two friends and con- 
fidants, Cotton and Winthrop, met again. A 
full exchange of news and of views doubtless 
attended that meeting. Cotton on his part 
would have an interesting story enough to 
pour into eager ears. Winthrop's topic would 
be the progress of affairs in the Colony. He 
would describe the decimated and almost des- 
titute condition in which they found the Colony 
when they disembarked at Salem with the 
Charter of the Company: the newcomers had 
to feed the settlers as well as themselves out of 
their own none too ample store, and it is on 
record that six months after arrival Winthrop 
was in the act of giving out to a poor man the 
last handful of meal in the communal barrel 
when a ship with provisions providentially 
appeared at the harbour's mouth. The Gov- 
ernor would point proudly to the growth of settle- 
ments along the shores of the Bay from Salem 
to Dorchester, and would speak more sadly of 
their struggles and trials, and the unhappy 
deaths of his own son, of the Lady Arbella and 
Isaac Johnson, and others. 

Problems of government would also be dis- 
cussed by these framers of the civil and rehgious 
institutes of Massachusetts, for now between 
two and three thousand people had come 
over, numerous small towns had been founded, 









THE PURITAN FATHERS 115 

and the plantation was rapidly developing 
into a State. The Pilgrims of Plymouth were 
still in the peaceful possession of a part of 
the territory afterwards included within Massa- 
chusetts, enjoying the independence which con- 
tinued to be theirs for nearly sixty more years. 
On Winthrop's first appearance their popula- 
tion did not exceed three hundred souls. They 
had helped John Endicott in his distress by 
sending over Samuel Fuller, deacon and physi- 
cian, to heal his sick; and now Governor Win- 
throp would tell John Cotton how a year before, 
in September, 1632, he and John Wilson had 
been entertained by Governor Bradford and 
Elder Brewster and Roger Williams, Cotton's 
Lincolnshire friend, at Plymouth when, on a 
historic occasion in those early Colonial days, 
they assembled there and partook together of 
the Holy Communion, engaged in religious dis- 
cussion, and, at the suggestion of Deacon Fuller, 
joined in a contribution for the wants of the 
poor. In after years, when Boston and Plym- 
outh became members incorporate of the same 
Commonwealth, this small but significant inci- 
dent, which is carefully detailed by Winthrop 
in his Journal, would be looked back upon as the 
prelude to the closer relations which grew up 
between the sister settlements. 

It is no adulation to say that Cotton, when 
he came, was "a burning and a shining light" 
in the wilderness. Nor is it surprising that they 
declared "this great light must be set in their 




fa 



i-^- 



ii6 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

chief candlestick." At the instigation of its 
Governor and Council and the elders of the 
Colony the Church accepted him as its teacher. 
John Wilson, after serving temporarily as 
teacher, was its first pastor. Thomas Leverett 
was also placed in office in the Church. The 
ceremony of installation, and of induction as 
minister, took place on October lo, 1633, 
when, in the words of Winthrop, "A fast was 
kept at Boston, and M' Leverett, an ancient 
sincere professor of M' Cotton's congregation 
in England, was chosen a ruling elder, and M' 
Firmin, a godly man, an apothecary of Sudbury 
in England, was chosen deacon, by imposition 
of hands; and M' Cotton was then chosen 
teacher of the congregation of Boston, and 
ordained by imposition of the hands of the 
presbytery." 

Cotton was first "chosen by all the congre- 
gation testifying their consent by erection of 
hands." Then Mr. Wilson, the pastor, de- 
manded of him "if he did accept of that call." 
He replied that he could not but accept it. 
"Then the pastor and the two elders laid their 
hands upon his head, and the pastor prayed, 
and then, taking off their hands, laid them on 
again, and, speaking to him by his name, they 
did thenceforth design him to the said office, in 
the name of the Holy Ghost, and did give him 
the charge of the congregation, and did thereby 
(as by a sign from God) indue him with the 
gifts fit for his office; and lastly did bless him. 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 117 

Then the neighbouring ministers, which were 
present, did (at the pastor's motion) give him 
the right hand of fellowship, and the pastor 
made a stipulation between him and the congre- 
gation." Truly a touching service, impressive 
in the simple and beautiful language in which 
its record has come down to us. Both ** pastors 
and teachers" were adopted for the Church as 
laid down by Paul in Ephesians iv. 11 "for 
the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the 
ministry." 

In his humble little church of clay and thatch, 
built in 1632, Cotton at once estabhshed the 
same weekly Thursday Lecture that he founded 
in his grand parish church at Old Boston. 

Heavy and harassing as the work and life in 
his Lincolnshire parish had been, those which 
lay before him were even more trying for John 
Cotton. New controversies and perplexities and 
excitements were ahead, beside which those of 
the Old World paled into insignificance. In all 
that followed Cotton was a conspicuous figure. 
In so far as he failed, and his coadjutors in the 
government of the Colony failed, the fault lies 
at the door of their fatal experiment of a Puritan 
Commonwealth. Cotton has been called, and his 
memory honoured as, the "Patriarch of the Mas- 
sachusetts Theocracy," and has been described 
as "the clerical oracle of the Theocracy," 
a system which outraged the principles of civic 
liberty, which opened wide the door for intoler- 
ance and persecution, was impracticable in its 




,<3.. 



ii8 THE ROMANTIC STORYOF 

working, and violated the fundamental Protes- 
tant doctrine of the right of private judgment. 

Cotton, as we shall see, sympathised with and 
encouraged the theocracy, but the law by which 
it came to be established was none of his making : 
it was laid down by the General Court two years 
before his coming, when it was "ordered that 
henceforth no man shall be admitted to the free- 
dom of this Commonwealth but such as are 
members of the churches within the hmits of 
this jurisdiction.'* In other words, there were 
to be no voters except church members, who were 
received only on approval of the clergy. This 
made the ministers supreme, and gave them 
power over matters of civic moment. Church 
and State were one; and the one was to be the 
Church. 

But other matters have to be considered in 
conjunction with the development of this per- 
nicious system which the founders of the Bay 
Colony set up. Welcome as the great Puritan 
preacher was, he brought over with him from 
England some views in regard to civil govern- 
ment which were by no means acceptable in the 
Colony. These views he took occasion to im- 
press and enforce in the election sermon which 
he dehvered before the General Court in the 
following May (1634), when he maintained 
**that a magistrate ought not to be turned into 
the condition of a private man without just cause, 
any more than a magistrate may turn a private 
man out of his freehold." The General Court 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 119 

replied to this by at once electing a new Governor, 
and thus repudiated the suggestion of a vested 
right in a pohtical office. 

But in April, 1636, it was ordered by the 
General Court "that a certain number of magis- 
trates should be chosen for life." This council 
for Hfe was undoubtedly the work of John 
Cotton, and was designed to encourage the 
coming over to New England of some of those 
noblemen of Old England to whom life tenures 
were dear, and who shrank from trusting their 
distinction to popular favour. 

Cotton was corresponding with Lord Say and 
Sele, to whom he wrote in 1636: "Till I get 
some release from my constant labours here 
(which the Church is desirous to procure), I 
can get little or no opportunity to read any- 
thing, or to attend to anything but the daily 
occurrences which press upon me continually, 
much beyond my strength either of body or 
mmd. 

About this time a paper was received by the 
Massachusetts authorities entitled "Certain pro- 
posals made by Lord Say, Lord Brooke, and 
other persons of quahty as conditions of their 
removing to New England." The object was 
to secure to the proposed emigrants that in the 
Bay government hereditary privileges above 
"the common sort" should be secured to those of 
gentle blood. But, while wilhng to accord 
hereditary honours," the rulers of the Colony 
could not concede "hereditary authority." Nor 




120 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 



could they admit that the freeholders or voters 
should be those who owned a certain personal 
estate, for the condition of the franchise must 
be membership of some church. The only- 
magistrates they could set in office must be 
"men fearing God" (Exodus xviii. 21), and these 
must be "chosen out of their brethren" (Deut. 
xvii. 15) "by saints" (I. Cor. vi. i). Here was 
a frank and full avowal that the Puritan State 
was founded on and identical with the Puritan 
Church. The Puritan theocracy must be ad- 
ministered by God's people in Church covenant. 
Anyhow, the council for Hfewas estabhshed, 
and not only was it entirely in keeping with 
Cotton's election sermon of 1634, but it was 
expressly provided for in the Code of Laws 
drafted on the model of "Moses his Judicials" 
which he presented to the General Court in 
October, 1636. This Code, which was under- 
stood to be the work of Cotton and Mr. Belhng- 
ham,^ was not adopted, but was printed in 
London in 1641. Norton, in his Memoir of 
Mr. Cotton, says it was in this abstract that 

^ In this connection may be noted the sale by auction in London in 
the autumn of 1905 of a MS. of some interest. It is a transcript, written 
on twenty leaves of paper, of the Charter of Boston, Lincolnshire, 
granted in the reign of Henry VIII, showing that it was employed by 
the early settlers when founding the now greater city of Boston, Massa- 
chusetts. The MS., written in a hand of the time of Charles I, con- 
tains copy and analyses of grants made by Henry VIII to the town of 
Boston. From its being found at Hingham, Massachusetts and by 
reason of its being endorsed "Massachusetts, one of the American 
States, the capital," it is believed that the collation was made for 
use as a guide to the founders of New Boston in framing their 
constitution. 



u 



=^! 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 121 

Cotton "advised the people to persist in their 
purpose of estabhshing a Theocracy, i.e., God's 
government for God's people." The first Code 
adopted was the "Body of Liberties" drawn 
up in 1638 by Nathaniel Ward, pastor of the 
Ipswich Church, formerly a student and practiser 
of the law in England, whose "Simple Cobbler 
of Agawam " has made his name familiar. This 
Code of Laws, one hundred in number, was au- 
thorised three years later, in 1641, when Richard 
Bellingham succeeded to the governorship. 

Meanwhile all was not harmony within the 
"inner circle" at Boston. In the governing 
body itself there were open disagreements and 
disputes between Winthrop and Dudley. For 
these quarrels the temper of the deputy — he 
was "somewhat querulous and exacting" — 
must be held responsible. Certainly Winthrop, 
in the course of misunderstandings which must 
have given him infinite pain, exhibited a 
brotherly spirit, for we have the incident of his 
returning an insulting letter to Dudley and tell- 
ing him "I am not willing to keep such an 
occasion for provocation by me." The times 
were no doubt trying for them all. Bigger 
storm-clouds were gathering. In 1634 Dudley 
succeeded to the governorship, but in the May 
following was dropped from the chief magis- 
tracy and John Haynes was chosen Governor in 



I 








122 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

threw themselves into the affairs of the Colony. 
Vane, a young man of four and twenty, was son 
of Sir Henry Vane, Comptroller of the King's 
Household in England, and had been employed 
by his father while a foreign ambassador. Vane 
and Peters considerably accelerated the pace 
of New England politics. They straightway 
called a meeting at Boston of the leading magis- 
trates and ministers of the Colony with a view 
to '*heahng some distractions'* in the Common- 
wealth and effecting "a more firm and friendly 
uniting of minds." At this meeting Vane and 
Peters, with Governor Haynes and the ministers 
Cotton, Wilson, and Hooker, declared themselves 
in favour of a more rigorous administration of 
government than had hitherto been pursued. 
Winthrop was charged with having displayed 
"overmuch lenity." The ministers delivered a 
formal opinion "that strict discipline both in 
criminal offences and in martial affairs was more 
needful in plantations than in settled States, 
as tending to the honour and safety of the 
Gospel." In accordance with the resolution of 
April, 1636, Winthrop and Dudley were at the 
election in May chosen counsellors for Kfe, and 
Vane was at the same time made Governor of 
Massachusetts. Winthrop accepted the deputy- 
governorship, and in his Journal says that 
because Vane "was son and heir to a Privy 
Councillor in England the ships congratulated 
his election with a volley of great shot." This 
was auspicious. Vane's administration, however, 





!/ 



Reproduced from an old Engraving, through the Courtesy of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society 



Hugh Peters 




'^ 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 123 

was disturbed by violent religious and civil con- 
tentions involving the story of Mrs. Hutchin- 
son and the Antinomian controversy, and only 
lasted a year. It was a very lively time for 
everybody. The place was in a tumult. Pastor 
Wilson threw himself into the election against 
Vane, who had dared to take the side of Mrs. 
Hutchinson, and having, with more agility than 
dignity, "got up on the bough of a tree,'* 
harangued the crowd in a speech which is said 
to have turned the election. Governor Win- 
throp thus entered on his fifth term of the chief 
magistracy in May, 1637, and soon after his 
re-election the General Court passed the order 
"that none should be received to inhabite 
within this jurisdiction but such as should be 
allowed by some of the magistrates," which 
gave rise to the final wordy bout between him- 
self and Vane. Both Harry Vane and Roger 
Wilhams, and later Mrs. Hutchinson, found a 
sympathiser in John Cotton. Vane was indeed 
one of his "early good friends,'* and when he 
left the Colony he gave him the house in which 
Cotton hved and died at Boston.^ 

1 This house, the home of young "Harry" Vane, as he is usually called 
— he was afterwards Sir Henry Vane — and next of John Cotton, stood 
UfHjn the slope of Beacon Hill, on the west side of the lower entrance to 
what is now Pemberton Square, about on the rear portion of the present 
site of the Suffolk Savings Bank building. It consequently immedi- 
ately overlooked what is now ScoIIay Square, and commanded Court 
Street and State Street. Later the dwelling was occupied by Hull the 
Mint Master, and Samuel Sewall, the first Chief Justice of the Colony. 
A little to the south of it resided Governor Bellingham, in a house which 
was still standing in 1828. Wilson, the pastor, lived where the Mer- 
chants' Bank stands, and Wilson's Lane until recent years transmitted 



^S 




124 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

Disgusted by his experience, Vane returned to 
England in August of the same year,^ Governor 
Winthrop giving orders for his "honorable dis- 
mission" with "divers volhes of shot." He kept 
up a friendly correspondence with Winthrop 
and Cotton till 1645, ^^^ showed himself a true 
friend to New England. His fate was exceed- 
ingly melancholy. Beaten by the bigotry of 
one Commonwealth, he died by the headsman's 
axe for his faithful service to another. 

So far from diminishing with the departure of 
the hapless Vane, contentions in the Colony 
waxed fiercer than ever, and the General Court 
adopted harsher repressive measures. The first 
serious trouble to engage the Court was that 
of Roger Wilhams, who arrived with his wife 
at Boston in 1631, while Wilson was absent in 

the name of the minister. The site of the present old State House was 
originally the op>en Market-place of the town, and the first meeting- 
house stood on the south side of the Market-place, on the spot now 
covered by Brayer's Building. 

^ After his return home Sir Henry Vane became active in the service 
of the Parliament. At the Westminster Assembly he pressed for full 
religious liberty, and he supported the efforts of Cromwell in establish- 
ing the Self-denying Ordinance and the New Model. He filled the 
office of Treasurer of the Navy, and it was through his exertions that 
Blake was fitted out with the fleet with which Van Tromp was defeated. 
After the Civil War he retired to Belleau in Lincolnshire, which was 
sequestered to him; and there on Sundays he was long to be found 
assembling and preaching to his country neighbours. His shameful 
death at the Restoration is a blot on the national history. The return 
of royalty also brought to the scaffold his old friend the famous Hugh 
Peters, who after seven years' active labours as a New England minis- 
ter, became a promoter of the English Commonwealth. It was Mr. 
Peters who, in 1636, from Salem "rebuked the governour," and "plainly 
insinuated that if governours would concern themselves only with the 
things of Caesar, the things of God would be more quiet and prosperous." 




ffl 






I 




I 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 125 

England, and was invited to become its teacher, 
but refused, because, forsooth, the members of 
the Church would not **make humble confes- 
sion of sin in having communed with the Church 
of England." Wilhams was not then known as 
in after years for his sweetness of spirit, Hber- 
ality and magnanimity, but seems rather to 
have impressed those who met him with holding 
** singular opinions," and being "very unsettled 
in judgmente." He went to Salem, next for a 
short time to Plymouth, and returned to Salem 
in 1634. Elder Brewster, fearing that he would 
"run a course of rigid Separation and Anabap- 
tistry," was glad to facihtate his removal from 
Plymouth. Then began his conflict with the 
Massachusetts authorities. Seven days after 
the meeting called at Boston by Vane and Peters, 
at which a more rigorous administration was 
decided upon. Governor Haynes and the Assist- 
ants were informed that Roger Wilhams, who 
in the previous October had been sentenced by 
the General Court to depart out of their juris- 
diction within six weeks, and to whom hberty 
had been granted "to stay till spring," was 
using this Hberty for preaching and propagating 
the doctrines for which he had been censured. 
So they despatched Captain Underbill to appre- 
hend him, with a view to his being shipped off 
at once to England. But Wilhams escaped to 
Narragansett Bay, and became the founder of 
Rhode Island. 

This same Underbill was a member of the 



126 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

Boston Church, and very serviceable in his 
mihtary capacity; but he was a sad reprobate, 
and when, under the Antinomian cloak, he was 
detected of gross immorahty he had the assurance 
to tell the pure-hearted Governor Winthrop 
**that the spirit had sent in to him the witness 
of Free Grace while he was in the moderate 
enjoyment of the creature called tobacco" — 
that is, while he was smoking his pipe! 

Anne Hutchinson, the most prominent among 
the Antinomians at Boston — that fearless 
matron from the Old Boston, where she was a 
devout attendant upon Cotton's preaching — 
was an excellent woman, to whose personal 
conduct attaches no stain. Described by Win- 
throp as possessing **a ready wit and a bold 
spirit," she proved a sharp thorn in the side 
of the New England rulers. Trusted and es- 
teemed by many of the principal women of the 
New Boston, Mrs. Hutchinson drew groups of 
them around her to discuss the sermons de- 
hvered by the associate ministers, and she so 
worked upon them that "the whole community," 
we are told, "was in a fever of mutual distrust. 
Jealousy and dread of impending catastrophe." 
The associate elders. Cotton and Wilson, and 
the governors Vane and Winthrop, each took 
different sides in the contest. Anne for a while 
held her own in the controversy, which entailed 
many a home thrust for the "ushers of perse- 
cution," as she called her opponents. But they 
bore her down at last, and the way they did 



i 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 127 

it is one of the most curious and enlightening 
passages of the time. After browbeating their 
victim — this "breeder of heresies" — on two 
successive Thursday Lecture days, and entan- 
ghng themselves in the process in the labyrinths 
of divinity (those "doctrinal thickets," and 
"metaphysical mayes," which appal the pres- 
ent-day student of the times), from ten in the 
morning into the evening hours, they decreed 
banishment and said if she dared to return, the 
punishment would perhaps be death. Sentence 
of excommunication was pronounced by her en- 
emy, Wilson, who cast her out, and "in the name 
of Christ" dehvered her up to Satan, and ac- 
counted her to be from that time forth a heathen, 
a publican, and a leper. The ultimate fate of 
this unfortunate woman in another colony — 
falling with all her family save one child in the 
Indian massacre — was most sad and deplorable. 
Probably the worst features of the Puritan dis- 
cipline, with its attendant folhes and errors, 
were the outrages visited by it on individuals 
and classes who, however offensive in their 
heresies, were pure and upright in their lives. 
In this Antinomian contest, as presented by 
Mrs. Hutchinson and her friends and foes, not 
strangers and intruders, but members of the 
community, most of them in full church cove- 
nant, were made to suffer the penalties of the 
Puritan rule. 

The incorporation of religion with the State 
bred disastrous mistakes. It was a fundamental 





128 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

principle that all laws should be in accordance 
with the Scriptures as interpreted by the min- 
isters and elders of the congregations; and any 
omissions in the settled Code were to be suppHed 
from the same source, under the same direc- 
tion. "Whatever John Cotton delivered in the 
pulpit," says a contemporary historian, "was 
soon put into an order of the Court, or set up as 
a practice in the church." In discourses at the 
Thursday Lecture he was ever ready, not only 
to give decided counsels on secular matters 
when his advice was sought, but, when some 
critical point was in contest before the Court, 
he would adjudicate upon the subject, ostensibly 
through his "exposition of the Word of God." 

None other than the Puritan form of worship 
was on any pretence to be tolerated; and absence 
from the church services without good and suffi- 
cient excuse, such as dangerous illness, was 
punishable more or less severely. The penalties 
incurred by infringement of any portion of these 
laws were, in the first years of the Colony, fine, 
whipping, imprisonment, banishment; but as 
the spirit of opposition to which this severity 
naturally gave rise grew stronger, more stringent 
expedients were resorted to, until at last sentence 
of torture and death was pronounced, and even 
executed, upon stubborn heretics to the Puritan 
estabfishment. 

Troubles galore were bred by the oppressive 
system adopted. History records how these 
Puritans, who had tasted the bitters of per- 



« 



"^ 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 129 

secution, held with a ready hand the cup to 
the lips of those who opposed them. The 
very weapon that was used on themselves they 
now unsparingly turned upon others. The ex- 
cuse was sardonic. Having themselves escaped 
a tyranny which they found hateful, they es- 
tabhshed here a tyranny which they beheved to 
be essential and even beneficial. The perse- 
cuted came to be the persecutors, and those who 
had been driven out of England for their non- 
conformity now banished people from New Eng- 
land because of their opinions. The tyranny 
exercised was of a thoroughgoing kind. So strict 
were they in avoiding whatever savoured of 
ritual, that the very rites of marriage and burial 
were relegated to civil hands; the drum-beat, 
and not the bell, was the summons to worship; 
no instrument, but only the human voice, was 
allowed in the services; and the pubhc read- 
ing of the Scriptures without exposition was 
forbidden. 

Orders issued by the General Court serve to 
illustrate the spirit of the legislation as well as 
the habits of the people at this period. The 
Court for example, "taking into consideration 
the great superfluous and unnecessary expenses 
occasioned by reason of some new and immodest 
fashions," as also "the ordinary wearing of 
silver, gold and silk laces, girdles, hatbands" 
and what not, ordered "that no person, either 
man or woman, shall hereafter make or buy 
any apparel either woollen, silk or linen, with 



130 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

any lace on it, silver, gold, silk or thread," 
under the penalty of forfeiture of such clothes. 
Even "the creature called tobacco" did not 
escape. "It is ordered that no person shall 
take tobacco publicly under the penalty of two 
shillings and six pence, nor privately in his own 
house or in the house of another before strangers, 
and that two or more shall not take it together 
anywhere, under the aforesaid penalty for every 
offence." There is nothing very remarkable in 
this; it is curious, though in keeping with the 
temper of the times. But the punishments 
inflicted upon offenders against the Puritan 
tyranny were unreasonably severe even in that 
austere age. 

Samuel Gorton, a "clothier from London," 
appeared at Boston in 1636 and shortly after- 
wards went to Plymouth, whence he was soon 
expelled for his strange heresies. Next he was 
whipped in Rhode Island for calling the magis- 
trates "just-asses," and found refuge with Roger 
Wilhams in Providence. In a dispute with the 
Boston authorities about the lands on which he 
and others were settled he was seized, and with 
ten of his followers was brought to Boston, where 
for his "damnable heresies" he was put in irons, 
confined to labour and whipped, and then ban- 
ished on pain of death if he appeared there 
again. Gorton was described by the magistrates 
as "the very dregs of Familism"; he was in 
fact a disciple of the fanatic David George of 
Delft, founder of the "Family of Love," who 



i 




'4 



i 






THE PURITAN FATHERS 131 

called himself the "Messiah." Other typical 
cases are those of Henry Lynne and Philip Rat- 
chffe, who for "slandering" the rulers and elders 
were mercilessly ill used. Mr. Britton for criti- 
cising the churches was openly whipped. Doro- 
thy Talbye, driven to distraction by incessant 
religious teachings, was hanged for murdering 
her little daughter, in the hope, as she said, that 
she might free her from future misery. She was 
insane, but they mistook her madness for crim- 
inahty. At Salem the wife of one Oliver, for 
reproaching the elders, was whipped and had a 
cleft stick put on her tongue for half-an-hour. 
That they were no respecters of persons, these 
reformers, is shown by their handling of Robert 
Keayne, brother-in-law of Pastor Wilson and 
founder of the Artillery Company, who had been 
chosen four times from Boston to the General 
Court. Arraigned for charging too much for 
his goods of commerce, he was admonished by 
the Church for covetousness and sentenced by 
the Court to pay a fine of one hundred pounds. 
About this time Edward Palmer, accused of 
extortion in taking too much for the plank and 
woodwork of Boston stocks, was fined and de- 
graded by being made to sit for an hour in his 
own machine as an object lesson to wrong-doers! 
But this punishment, if mortifying to the spirit, 
was not so hard to bear as that of Captain 
Kemble, who had to sit in the stocks two hours for 
kissing his wife pubhcly on the Sabbath Day when 
he first saw her after an absence of three years. 




THE BOSTONS AND "THE SCARLET 

LETTER" 



m 






All 





Rise, then, buried city that bast been; 
Rise up, rebuilded in the painted scene. 
And let our curious eyes behold once more 
The pointed gable and the pent-house door. 
The Meeting-house with leaden-latticed panes. 
The narrow thorough fares, the crooked lanes ! 

Prologue to The New England Tragedies 

Lx)NGFELLOW 

''^HE history we have been considering 
has been painted for us in startling hues 
,1 by the author of "The Scarlet Letter,'* 
that wonderful romance which captivated and 
still holds the world. A pitiless portrayal of 
New England Puritanism, it is remarkable for 
the phantasy rather than the fidehty of its 
pages; but whatever its imaginative flights, 
it breathes the spirit and is clothed with the 
atmosphere of the times. 

What a scene and what thoughts are those 
which Nathaniel Hawthorne conjures up in 
his picture of the New Boston! Emerging 
from the "iron-clamped oaken door" of the 
town gaol in Prison Lane — corresponding, 
shall we say, with the narrow Httle Guild- 
hall Street of Old Boston? — comes comely 
Hester Prynne, "an infant on her arm, and 








136 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically em- 
broidered with gold thread, upon her bosom.'* 
She is preceded by the town beadle, represent- 
ing in his grim aspect all the austerity of the 
Puritanic code of law. Hester walks to the 
scaffold at the extremity of the Market-place, 
there to exhibit publicly her shame to the 
sombre gazing crowd of men in sad-coloured 
garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, inter- 
mixed with women, and mounts the wooden 
steps leading to the platform of the pillory, 
which ** stood nearly beneath the eaves of Bos- 
ton's earliest church"; just as the punishment 
place of the Old Boston was a corner of the 
Market-square almost in the shadow of the 
mother church, where they had their gaol and 
their "Little-Ease," their pillory, a pillory-pit 
which was walled around the year John Cotton 
came, and afterwards a ducking-stool in that 
same pit and a "hurry cart," tied to the tail 
of which poor wretches were hurried round all 
too slowly and whipped at the door of every 
Alderman. 

A strange contrast this of the two Bostons. 
But there is another which appeals to us more. 
For was it not — as a New England divine * 
reminded men two hundred years later when 
the second centenary of the founding of Cotton's 
Thursday Lectures was celebrated — in this 



/ 



I 



* Dr. Nathaniel L. Frothingham, a successor of John Cotton in the 
ministry of the First Church in Boston, of which he was pastor 1815-50. 
His wife was a descendant of Cotton. 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 137 

"poor meeting-house" of New Boston, "having 
nothing better than mud for its walls and straw 
for its roof,'* that the same eloquent voice was 
uplifted that had been "heard many and many 
a time roHing among the stately gothic arches 
of St. Botolph" and had ministered "under one 
of the loftiest and most magnificent towers in 
Europe, lifting itself up as the pride of the sur- 
rounding country and a landmark to them that 
are afar off at sea"? 

In a balcony of the meeting-house, looking 
down upon the platform and hapless Hester 
Prynne and her babe, sat with counsellors and 
ministers a notable figure from the Old Boston, 
"Governor Bellingham himself, with four ser- 
geants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a 
guard of honour. He wore a dark feather in 
his hat, a border of embroidery on his cloak, 
and a black velvet tunic beneath; a gentleman 
advanced in years, with a hard expression 
written in his wrinkles." Now follow short 
harangues from the Reverend John Wilson (look- 
ing Kke "the darkly engraved portraits" seen 
"prefixed to old volumes of sermons") and from 
Ruler Bellingham ("speaking in an authoritative 
voice") bidding "Good Master Dimmesdale," 
that paragon of excellence in the assembled 
eyes (a young clergyman who had come 
"from one of the great English universities, 
bringing all the learning of the age into our wild 
forest-land"), exhort the wearer of the scarlet 
token to repentance and confession. We know 




I 



138 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

how he did it, and what it must have cost him; 
also how brave Hester Prynne, with a mis- 
placed fidelity, screens her betrayer and will not 
speak out his name. 

Then the long and thunderous discourse of 
Master Wilson **on sin in all its branches," 
but with repeated reference to the ignominious 
letter, which very naturally assumed new terrors 
to the multitude and "seemed to derive its 
scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal pit." 
So much so that, when Hester came down from 
the pedestal of shame and re-entered the prison, 
it was fancied in the heated imagination of the 
throng that the symbol "threw a lurid gleam 
along the dark passage-way of the interior." 

We have another picture of Belhngham and 
his home in the visit paid by Hester to the 
Governor's Hall, with its row of portraits on 
the wall of the forefathers of the Bellingham 
lineage. There is a reproachful bitterness about 
this description that is not justified to anything 
like the same extent as the vein of hostility 
running through the story to the misguided 
severity which is responsible for the wearing 
of the scarlet letter. It must therefore be re- 
garded in the light of a caricature. Thus of 
Governor Bellingham it is said that "The wide 
circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his 
gray beard, in the antiquated fashion of King 
James' reign, caused his head to look not a 
little like that of John the Baptist in a charger"; 
and "The impression made by his aspect, so 



i 




zo 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 

rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more 
than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping 
with the appliances of worldly enjoyment where- 
with he had evidently done his utmost to 
surround himself." Even Pastor Wilson is rep- 
resented as a very comfortable personage, with 
a marked fondness for the good things of this 
world. 

We have later a weird scene in which the 
restless, remorseful Dimmesdale wanders forth 
into the silent night and in a moral frenzy 
mounts the guilty platform, "black and weather- 
stained with the storm or sunshine of seven long 
years," where Hester Prynne had stood. In his 
mental agony he shrieks aloud. But he only 
arouses Governor Bellingham, and the hoary 
magistrate appears at a chamber window with 
a lamp in his hand, a nightcap on his head, and 
a long white gown enveloping his figure, look- 
ing "Hke a ghost evoked unseasonably from the 
grave"; and old Mistress Hibbins, the Gov- 
ernor's sister, also with a lamp reveahng her 
"sour and discontented face." But the alarm 
passes off. The Reverend Mr. Wilson, fresh 
from his vigil by the deathbed of Governor 
Winthrop,^ goes by unheeding. Not so Hester 
Prynne, who, returning from Winthrop's house, 
where she has "taken his measure for a robe," 
is called by the distraught Dimmesdale, and 



^Winthrop died in 1649, the same year in which John Cotton lost 
Roland, his youngest son, and Sarah, his eldest daughter, within a few 
days of each other, victims of the small-pox. 




140 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 



with her infant ascends again that scaffold and 
stands beside him. 

The scene heightens in intensity, for now a 
meteor sweeps across the sky, illuming it. "And 
there stood the minister, with his hand over his 
heart; and Hester Prynne, with the embroidered 
letter ghmmering on her bosom; and Httle 
Pearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting hnk 
between these two." The meteor in its flight 
appears to take the shape of an immense letter 
A "marked out in hnes of dull red hght"; and 
at this awful moment, admonitory as it seems 
of the judgment day, is disclosed near the plat- 
form the avenging figure of fiendish old Roger 
ChiHingworth. He also is from poor Winthrop's 
bedside. But why feebly repaint the thrilling 
spectacle here? It is there in Hawthorne's- 
masterpiece. A situation more strongly charged 
with vividness could not well be; and, if the 
portent in the sky was read by all New Boston 
who saw it as the spirit of good Governor 
Winthrop departing to its rest, why, it pro- 
claims the work of a great artist, and nothing 
more.^ 

* When John Cotton died, three years later, the superstition of the 
day discerned alarming portents in the heavens while his body lay 
ready for burial. Norton, his successor, in " The New England Trage- 
dies" voices the beliefs of the time when he says of Cotton and his own 
coming to Boston : 

And, as he lay 
On his death-bed, he saw me in a vision 
Ride on a snow-white horse into this town. 

When Norton died of apoplexy the friends of the persecuted Quakers, 
after the fashion of the day, pronounced it "a judgment of the Lord." 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 141 

But there is a scene more powerfully dra- 
matic still when the tormented and faihng 
Dimmesdale, pulled together by a last supreme 
effort, embraces the opportunity of his Hfe, and 
before fleeing the town with Hester (what a 
climax!) preaches the Election Sermon. We 
have here described the press of the holiday 
throng, and the procession of the magistrates 
and citizens to the meeting-house of New Boston, 
headed by drum and clarion; the company 
of soldiers foHowing the swefling music with 
weapons and armour; the men of civil eminence 
behind the military escort — Bradstreet, Endi- 
cott, Dudley, Bellingham, and others not named, 
who could easily be suggested — the ministers, 
and the rest. 

It is aH finely drawn, and surely it is all an 
importation from the Old Boston, where the 
same kind of procession had so often moved 
through the Market-place to the mother church, 
with the Mayor and Corporation preceded by 
the great maces which in 16 19 replaced the 
smaller maces before that time in use (from 
which great maces, the year after their pur- 
chase, Churchwarden Atherton Hough, now 
marching in the New Boston procession, was 
afleged to have struck off the offending crosses), 
and the Ehzabethan silver-gilt oar of the Ad- 
miralty jurisdiction; these emblems being 
proudly borne by the sergeants-at-mace and 
the Marshal of the Admiralty, followed by the 
borough chamberlain and other attendants, per- 




<;?<Sl 



142 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

chance with the accompaniment of music sup- 
plied by the liveried *'waytes," whose salaries 
the town had been privileged to pay for genera- 
tions; and all to hear a spiritual discourse, if 
not an Election Sermon, two hours long. 

But never in the Old Boston was the like of 
this; and never was such a sermon preached 
in the meeting-house of the New Boston before 
by John Cotton or anyone else. For the sainted 
minister is possessed — inspired; his eloquence 
is now wild and passionate, again touching and 
subdued, plaintive yet majestic and prophetic 
as he foretells "a high and glorious destiny for 
the newly-gathered people of the Lord." The 
sermon thrills through the congregation, crushed 
to the doors within and crowding round them 
without. Then the bewildering descent, sudden 
and tragic, from the pinnacle of pastoral fame. 
Once again the stately music and the tramping 
of the train as it starts on the return to the 
town's hall, where a solemn feast is to conclude 
the day's ceremonies. But it is never eaten. 
Can one imagine such a disaster ever over- 
taking the Old Boston! Dimmesdale is ac- 
claimed as a hero: but pale, tottering, all 
thought of flight abandoned, he leaves the 
ranks; repels the proffered aid of Wilson and 
Belhngham; and in full gaze of the horrified 
crowd mounts with Hester and her child the 
famihar scaffold, and there in the hush of the 
tumult makes his confession, and dies a death of 
triumphant ignominy. 



I 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 143 

What if, after this, racked spectators swore 
they saw revealed a scarlet letter like Hester 
Prynne's imprinted in the flesh of the guilty 
Dimmesdale when, in his convulsive agony, he 
tore the ministerial bands from before his breast? 

"The Scarlet Letter" — "that weird picture of 
the strong contrasts of Puritan hfe in Boston" 
it has been called ^ — is only a clever story. 
No one will mistake it for history; but the 
fabric of fancy of which it is built rests on a more 
solid groundwork, and it has its serious bent. 
Its author depicts the darker side of Puritanism, 
and that none too kindly; but his central idea 
is not far-fetched, because a system which could 
deal death to Quakers and hang witches, as 
that of New England came to do (sparing 
not even Anne Hibbins, widow of William Hib- 
bins, a magistrate and a man of note in Boston, 
and sister of no less a personage than Governor 
Bellingham himself), might well ordain the wear- 
ing of the scarlet letter. Hawthorne girds at 
the ill-directed zeal of the Puritan Fathers and 
their wrong treatment in the flesh of a moral 
wound, and he exposes the failure of these 
things as helps to reform. The story is finely 
told, and if its setting is lugubrious its lesson is 
a good one. It is "one of the most powerful 
and affecting stories ever written," declares a 
recent writer on Hawthorne.^' "If," says he. 




1 In " The Memorial History of Boston," Vol. I, p. 360. 
Rev, John White Chadwick, in the "Cyclopaedia of English Litera- 
ture," Vol. Ill, p. 777. 




144 



THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 



**as some complain, there is no divine forgive- 
ness in the story, there is human pity for the 
sinful pair. The heart of the reader is more 
enlisted on their side than on that of the Puritan 
community, and their souls are white compared 
with that of Roger Chillingworth." Neverthe- 
less the story is "unconscionably dark and sad," 
and our critic well says that "the only bright 
spot in it is the scarlet letter upon Hester's 
breast." And this saving feature of the pic- 
ture, which is also the most striking and con- 
spicuous, is not exaggerated. It is fact in 
another form! ActuaHty is but carried one 
step forward. There had been brandings before 
this with distinctive signs of ignominy, and 
fanaticism was not restricted to any given 
fashion or shape. Under the old persecuting 
laws, we know, men were burnt on the cheek 
with a hot iron, and if they dared to hide the 
mark they were Kable to be burnt outright as 
relapsed heretics; or they were condemned to 
wear the device of a faggot worked upon the 
sleeve of their clothing in token of their narrow 
escape from burning. So that the scarlet letter 
was merely a new apphcation of an old form 
after all. Here, it seems probable, Hawthorne 
derived the emblematic idea which he utilised 
so well. It was original only in detail, not in 
essential; and that makes his story the more 
convincing. And Hester Prynne! The very 
name is borrowed from Wilham Prynne, that 
martyr to a benighted bigotry, the Puritan 



i i 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 145 

hero, victim of Laud and the Star Chamber, 
whose ears were cropped in the pillory. 

Nor was Arthur Dimmesdale the first to 
secretly contrive adultery and afterwards make 
pubHc confession of it. In this Old Boston was 
first in the field, and if it did not give the cue 
to Nathaniel Hawthorne, it was at any rate 
before him. For in the Charter of Admiralty 
granted to Old Boston by Queen Ehzabeth was 
a clause which conferred on the Mayor and 
burgesses the power of punishing adulterers, if 
not with a scarlet letter, in some such salutary 
way. Let us see what happened. It is told in the 
Corporation records. There we read that in 
January, 1574, in open court, before the Mayor, 
Aldermen, and Common Council, a certain Alder- 
man ^ "did openly confess with a penitent heart, 
and lowly submission, that he had committed 
adultery.'* Upon which confession "the whole 
body, with one consent, considering the same 
offence to be most odious before God, and also 
shameful in this world, to the discredit of this 
house and the worshipful companie of the same," 

1 This was Christopher Audley, a nd that he was a man of consequence 
is shown by the fact that a year or two before this time he was sent by 
the Corporation as a deputation to London to seek some means of 
relieving the decay into which the port had fallen owing to the great 
storm and floods of 1571, commemorated since by Jean Ingelow in her 
spirited poem. Apparently the Alderman's mission was successful, for 
the following year Queen Ehzabeth granted to the Mayor and burgesses 
a license to export corn "for the rehef and succour of the borough," 
the inhabitants of which were "greatly impoverished and abnost 
utterly declined" through the "damage and hurt" caused by "the 
great violence and inundation, both of the salt and of the fresh 
waters." 



146 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

dismissed the erring Alderman from his office and 
the liberties of the house. But the Mayor, 
"considering what slander might ensue to the 
Corporation" if he should put the Alderman 
"to open punishment" for his offence, and also 
that he found the guilty Alderman **to have 
great penitence, and did willingly submit him- 
self to such punishment as the said Mayor might 
appoint, and for other great signs of penitence" 
which might appear in the offender, "did re- 
fuse to put him to open punishment, but sen- 
tenced him to pay for the said offence the sum 
of five pounds to the poor of the borough." 
And a certificate was made out under the seal 
of the borough relative to the punishment of the 
Alderman "for incontinence." 

And so it was that the adulterous Alderman 
had not to mount publicly the platform of the 
pillory wearing the letter "A" or its equivalent, 
in expiation of his scarlet sin. That he got off 
with a contribution to the borough poor-box 
was his good fortune and nothing else. Some 
five years later, in October, 1580, a lesser light 
of the Corporation, a Common Councilman, was 
dismissed by that virtuous body "for incon- 
tinent life," and the offending act is specified. 
But "the Twelve and the Eighteen," as the 
Aldermen and Councilmen described themselves, 
were only human, and at times they required 
firm handling. Even the Mayors, if the truth 
must be told, were not always above suspicion; 
for in 1583 we find the entry, "Every Mayor, 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 147 

at the expiration of his mayoralty, to pay over 
the ballance of his account, or be committed to 
prison until it is paid." This at all events was 
impartial dealing. We see that the sacred office 
of Mayor itself was no shield from righteous 
wrath incurred.^ 

In 1588 the learned Dr. Browne, Judge of the 
Admiralty Court at Boston, took the Charter 
Book to London "to show to the Lord of Canter- 
bury the charter concerning the punishment of 
lewd and lascivious livers." So it was something 
of a curiosity even in those days of strange hap- 
penings. We are not told what he of Canter- 
bury thought about it. A few years later it 
was agreed that the validity of the charter should 
be considered at the Lincoln Assizes, jointly by 
the agents of the Corporation and the bishop. 
But nothing came of this, and as late as 1644 
(just about the time of Hester Prynne's punish- 
ment) it was resolved that the charter "shall 
be duly put into execution." And that is the 
last we know of it. 

Old Boston had been trending in this direc- 
tion for a long time, for as far back as 1557 its 
Corporation ordered "that if any alderman 

^ " The Twelve and the Eighteen" were, however, sometimes more 
indulgent towards delinquent officials, as we see from an entry in the 
Corporation records of October 2, 1576. "William Kyme, town clerk, 
in prison upon an outlawry. He has occupied his office by deputy 
to last Michaelmas, and now it is agreed that if he can clear himself of 
imprisonment before his next term he shall be restored to office in statu 
quo primo." This William Kyme, Town Clerk of Boston, was a younger 
brother of Anthony Kyme, who had served as Mayor only two years 
previously. 



148 THE PURITAN FATHERS 

swear either *by the masse* or any other part 
or member of God, in the Hall or any other place, 
he shall pay for every othe so taken iid., and 
lykewyse everyone of the common council shall 
paye for every lyke defaute id.*' From the 
"othe" taking to adultery is a far cry, and the 
punishment when pecuniary differed as widely. 
But the same Puritanical spirit was behind it 
all, and the Charter of Elizabeth fell on congenial 
ground. 






IX 

PIONEERS OF EMPIRE — LINKS WITH 

OLD BOSTON — THE PURITAN 

STOCK 




PIONEERS OF EMPIRE — LINKS WITH 

OLD BOSTON — THE PURITAN 

STOCK 



Rise, too, ye shapes and shadows oj the Past, 
Rise Jrom your long-Jorgotten graves at last; 



Revisit your familiar haunts again. 

The scenes oj triumph, and the scenes of pain. 

Prologue to The New England Tragedies 

— Longfellow 

ET US trace briefly the fortunes, through 
these times of trial and turmoil, of the 
<^ Old Boston settlers and their friends. 
By his second wife John Cotton had six chil- 
dren, three sons and three daughters. Seaborn, 
the eldest, born on the broad Atlantic on the 
voyage out, settled in the ministry at Hampton 
in New Hampshire, and married Dorothy Brad- 
street in 1652, and secondly Prudence Wade. 
He was a scholar and a preacher of repute. 
His brother, John, who was noted for his knowl- 
edge of the Indian languages, and supervised 
the issue of Ehot's Bible, was minister at Ply- 
mouth, Massachusetts, and at Charleston, South 
Carolina. Roland, the youngest brother, died 
of the small-pox in 1649, within a few days of 
Sarah, his eldest sister, who also fell a victim 



;C3 



i 



152 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

to that dreadful scourge. Their sister Eliza- 
beth early married a merchant, Jeremiah Eggin- 
ton, and died when only eighteen. Maria, 
the youngest sister, espoused Dr. Increase 
Mather and was mother of the famous Cotton 
Mather. Both these gentlemen, father and 
son, were the implacable foes of witches; but 
each possessed qualities we can better admire. 
Cotton Mather was the most distinguished clerical 
writer of his time, and in his **MagnaHa Christi 
Americana" has preserved for us the ecclesias- 
tical records of the Colony during the first eighty 
years of its history. When Increase Mather 
set out for England in 1688 he was accom- 
panied by another son, Samuel, who became 
minister at Whitney in Oxfordshire. 

John Cotton died on December 23, 1652,^ 
as the result of a cold caught as he was crossing 
the ferry at Boston to preach at the new 
Cambridge. This was six months after his son 
Seaborn had married Dorothy Bradstreet. Mr 
Cotton was only sixty-seven when death closed 
his memorable career. That was an impressive 
funeral in the burial-ground of King's Chapel, 
when the first teacher of Boston's Church, lov- 

^ In his will, dated September 30, 1652, Cotton wrote: " My 
books I estimate to the value of one hundred and fifty f)ounds (though 
they cost me much more); I leave them to my two sons, Seaborn and 
John." Also: "I leave to my beloved wife all rents of her house and 
garden in the Market-place of Boston, Lincolnshire, which are mine by 
right of marriage with her, during my life. I give unto her what moneys 
were left in my brother Coneye's hands, and are now in the use of my 
sister, Mary Coneye, his wife, or my cousin (nephew) John Coneye, 
their son, so far as any part thereof remaineth in their hands." 



I 



I 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 




able and beloved in life by all his intimates, 
and forgiven in death doubtless by any who had 
cause to remember the unattractive side of his 
character, was borne on the shoulders of his 
fellow-ministers to his last long rest. His body 
was placed "in a tomb of brick" in the north 
corner of the graveyard. Memorial sermons 
were preached, and "New England mourned her 
loss," as well she might. After the death of 
Winthrop that loss was greatest to the Colony. 

Teacher Cotton's was a more subdued per- 
sonality than that of his colleague Pastor Wil- 
son, who survived him fifteen years and lived 
to be seventy-eight. It is recognised that 
Cotton's was the deeper and finer scholarship, 
and that he was a greater theologian and thinker, 
and we know how amiable and winning he could 
be. Doubtless Wilson also had his better 
quafities, and time would serve to bring them 
out. He has not lacked defenders and apolo- 
gists, whose admiration for him is evidently 
sincere. One of them, Dr. Nathaniel L. Froth- 
ingham, who preached to the First Church at 
its bicentenary in 1830, declares that "His zeal 
had no mixture of sternness in it," that he was 
"a pattern of wisdom and gentleness" and a 
man of "venerable sweetness," and calls for 
"blessings on his meek head!" This sympa- 
thetic attitude was assisted probably by a con- 
templation of the calmer eventide of that long 
and vigorous life, when the fierce noonday of 
discipline was past and there was less admonish- 



154 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

ing to be done. Another New England divine, 
the Reverend Grindall Reynolds, speaking at 
the memorial services of the Church fifty years 
later, looks a little deeper into the question, 
although his investigation leads him to much 
the same conclusion. "That he was a stern 
Puritan,'* says this friendly critic, ** capable of 
putting down any man or any opinion which 
he thought threatened the kingdom of God in 
this new world, is clear. That he shared the 
weakness and superstitions of the time, beheving 
in dreams and omens and the private gift of 
prophecy, we must admit." John Wilson was 
nevertheless **an apostle of zeal and love." We 
shall not begrudge him this ministerial tribute 



now. 



John Cotton did more to build up the future 
of the Colony which he helped to estabhsh, and 
posterity will readily enough endorse the verdict 
pronounced by Increase Mather that "both 
Bostons have reason to honour his memory, 
and New England most of all, which oweth its 
name and being to him, more than to any other 
person in the world." By a strange coincidence 
his widow, the erstwhile Mrs. Story of Old 
Boston, married, some time after his death, 
Richard Mather, minister of Dorchester, the 
father of Increase Mather. 

Of Cotton's influence upon the Hfe of New 
England it would be difficult to say too much, 
and the extent of the power he wielded 
cannot well be over-estimated. The part which 




J^.^ 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 

he played in the painful and distressing events 
associated with the early history of the Col- 
ony has been the subject of much criti- 
cal study and discussion. He was accused 
by his contemporaries of "acting with dupHc- 
ity," and his popularity for a time suffered 
some ecKpse. Yet to his lasting credit be it 
remembered he at least began by urging leniency 
and standing out for toleration. Both Cotton 
and Winthrop were inherently tolerant men. In 
the face of his clerical brethren Cotton depre- 
cated the employment of harsh measures and 
made as light as possible of the growing differ- 
ences of opinion. 

Before his arrival in the Bay the case of his 
old friend, the erratic but Kberty-Ioving Roger 
WiHiams, had begun to disturb the peace of the 
little community, and ere he had settled down 
to the new life the affair assumed a more serious 
character. Probably Cotton even at that time 
did not beheve in Williams' sound and Just con- 
tention that "civil magistrates have no Juris- 
diction over people's rehgious opinions, so long 
as the pubhc peace is not disturbed"; yet, 
when Williams was tried and found guilty of 
"dangerous opinions," and ordered to be ban- 
ished, he was the only one among all the min- 
isters who did not vote in favour of the measure. 
Later on he wrote to Wilhams that the decree 
was passed "without his counsel or consent," 
though he added, not very consistently, that he 
thought it "righteous in the eyes of God." 



5:^^^ 






156 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

Much the same was his attitude and bearing 
in the midst of the graver controversy which 
raged around Mrs. Hutchinson. Cotton en- 
deavoured to stem the ministerial onrush of 
persecution and abuse. When the contest in- 
creased in vehemence he faced again the united 
front of his clerical brethren, practically all of 
whom were bitter in their wish to punish the 
unfortunate woman. Only at the last, when he 
had spoken on her side and urged a tolerant 
treatment, did he let himself be talked over and 
fall in with the harsher and more narrow notions 
of his brother clergy. 

"In ways like these it may be claimed that 
Cotton showed a lack of vigorous will power 
and displayed his incapacity to stand by his con- 
victions," says the Reverend Paul Revere Froth- 
ingham, on an occasion which is noticed at the 
end of this chapter; but this, he thinks, in offer- 
ing a plausible solution of the question, "is not 
the explanation of the somewhat puzzling facts. 
It was all, as so often happens in this world, a 
matter of where the emphasis is placed. Cotton 
beheved, perhaps, in the policy of exclusion; but, 
when it came to practice, his kind heart did not 
like it. The fact of the matter is that the em- 
phasis which Roger Williams laid on liberty was 
laid by Cotton upon law and order. He saw 
the need of a firm and stable government. The 
least desirable colonists were those who acted 
as disturbers of the peace. He shared the de- 
lusion, likewise — which was a noble, though 



'V 






-»^-- 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 157 

mistaken dream — that a compact company of 
like believers could be gathered and perpetuated, 
who should realise and work out for themselves 
the kingdom of heaven upon earth." 

John Cotton is in some respects a curious 
study. A theocracy seemed to him a higher 
form of government than a democracy. For 
"if the people are governors," he asked, "who 
then are the governed"? Yet in spite of theo- 
cratic tendencies and practices he was the great 
champion and stern defender of what is known 
as the " New England Way" in matters of church 
government.^ That way was the way of "Con- 
gregationahsm," a term which Cotton himself 
is said to have originated. The congregational 
way, however, is the way of pure democracy 
within the Church. It meant entire hberty and 
full equality. From it sprang widespread tolera- 
tion and absolute freedom of religious thought. 
But what was right and best in Church could not 
long be denied the State; and so the "New 
England Way" inevitably broadened out until 
it led at last and opened into the civic and reli- 
gious hberty which is now enjoyed. This we 
may be sure was never contemplated by John 
Cotton; but, as Emerson tells us of another 
worker, in "The Problem" — and here was a 
problem in the making too : 

^ Perhaps the best explanation to be found in their own writings 
of the aim and character of the New England system of church govern- 
ment, as distinguished from that of the Church of England, is in John 
Cotton's "Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven" (1644), and in his "Way 
of the Churches of Christ in New England" (1645). 



158 THE ROMANTIC STORYOF 

He builded better than he knew; 
The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

Cotton's influence in the Colony deepened 
with the years. The first disturbances over 
and past, he yielded to the clerical party and 
settled himself to sterner work. After that 
there was no abatement in his authority and 
he held an undisputed sway. Professor Tyler, 
in his history of American literature, calls him 
"the unmitered pope of a pope-hating Com- 
monwealth," and says "he wielded with strong 
and brilliant mastership the fierce theocracy 
of New England. Laymen and clergymen 
alike recognised his supremacy and rejoiced in 
it.'* Amiable in disposition and essentially 
mild, among his fellows he was wefl beloved; 
environment, not temperament, would quicken 
his discipHnary zeal. Knowing him as we do — 
grave, gentle, dignified as he was — we may 
believe that the spirit of the administration in 
which he shared cost him many a pang. At 
such times he would probably quieten his con- 
science by putting the "emphasis on law and 
order." Still he had his better parts. His 
generosity we are told was marked, and he had 
a noble scorn of worldly goods. He insisted that 
his salary should come only from the free-will 
offerings of his people, and of his limited means 
he gave with open hand to others. "In effect- 
ing his settlement in New England he had spent 
a considerable sum of money for those days." 
But when the people wished to reimburse him 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 159 

he said "it was not necessary in the circum- 
stances." He kept open house and practised, 
it was said, the hospitahty of a bishop, paying 
special attention to the needy and distressed. 

But it was to his wonderful pulpit eloquence 
that he mainly owed his influence. Cotton first 
and foremost was a preacher. Longfellow, in his 
**New England Tragedies," using words which 
an early writer had employed, described him as a 

Chrysostom in his pulpit; Augustine 
In disputation; Timothy in his house! 

A contemporary of his declared that Cotton 
"had such an insinuating and melting way in 
his preaching that he would usually carry his 
very adversary captive after the triumphant 
chariot of his rhetoric." Another rapturous 
writer, bursting into verse, pictures Cotton as 

A man of might at heavenly eloquence 
To fix the ear and charm the conscience; 
As if ApoIIos were revived in him. 
Or he had learned of a Seraphim. 

and says of the preacher and his pulpit power : 

Rocks rent before him; blind received their sight; 
Souls levelled to the dunghill stood upright. 

Yet in the manner of his preaching John Cotton 
was "plain and perspicuous"; his chief anxiety 
was to be understood. It was that old magnetic 
touch of his, the magic of that personahty, that 
caught and held the hearer. 

The great Puritan preacher has left an endur- 
ing name. "John Cotton, his mark, very curi- 



i6o THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

ously stamped on the face of this planet; likely 
to continue for some time." So says Carlyle/ 
and there is truth in the rugged words. Less 
than four years before his own death Cotton 
lost his tried and constant friend John Winthrop. 
After for some time changing about the governor- 
ship and deputy-governorship with Endicott and 
Dudley, Winthrop had the principal post since 
1646, the year after his last controversy, de- 
scribed as "The Impeachment of Winthrop." 
Worn out in the service of the Colony, and feel- 
ing death approach, the good man in February, 
1649, sent for the elders of the Church to pray 
with him. In the parlour of his house,' 



imme- 



^With this opinion all will agree, but there is a strange want of 
accuracy in the first portion of the passage of which it forms part in 
Carlyle's work, "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations," 
Vol. Ill, p. 197: "Rev. John Cotton is a man held in some remembrance 
among our New England friends. He had been minister of Boston in 
Lincolnshire; carried the name across the ocean with him; fixed it upon a 
new small home he had found there, which has become a large one 
since, — the big, busy capital of Massachusetts, — Boston, so called." 
The whole passage is a good example of Carlyle's style, but it is not, as 
regards this portion of it, correct history. In his error as to the naming 
of Boston, Carlyle has not lacked followers. One of them, prominent 
at Old Boston, in a newspaper sketch he published at the Sexcentenary 
Celebration of St. Botolph's church, said: "Cotton died in 1652, two 
years after the settlement at Trimountain had adopted the name Boston, 
The sect which he founded has long since lost its civil power, and has 
become unitarian in religion." This is worse than Carlyle, and with 
less excuse. Which shall we say is the more astonishing, the belated 
renaming of the Trimountain settlement or this curt dismissal of "the 
sect"? 

^Winthrop's residence stood on what is now Washington Street, 
just opposite the foot of School Street; the garden is occupied by the 
Old South. The house was burnt up as firewood by the British soldiers 
in 1775, while they were using the meeting-house as a stable for their 
cavalry horses. 



: 



w\ 



THE PURITAN FATHERS i6i 

diately after he had breathed his last, a consulta- 
tion was held by the chief persons of Boston as 
to the order of the funeral, "it being the desire 
of all that in that solemnity it may appear of 
what precious account and desert he hath been 
and made blessed his memory." These were 
the words used by John Wilson, John Cotton, 
Richard Belhngham, and John Clark in a letter 
addressed to John Winthrop of Connecticut 
"from his father's parlour" on the same day, 
announcing that the funeral would take place 
on the 3 (13) of April, and despatched by a 
swift Indian messenger. Accordingly the re- 
mains were buried with "great solemnity and 
honour" in the King's Chapel burial-ground, 
where the old Winthrop tomb is still to be seen. 

Thomas Leverett and Atherton Hough pre- 
deceased their friend and leader in New Eng- 
land, the once Vicar of Old Boston. Both died 
in 1650, Leverett in February and Hough in 
September of that year. Mr. Leverett's widow 
lived six years longer. Mrs. Hough died in 
1643; but Atherton married a second wife, who 
survived him. 

Atherton's only son, the Reverend Samuel 
Hough of Reading, was ordained a few months 
before his father's death; he married Sarah, 
daughter of the Reverend Zechariah Symmes, 
and died at Boston in 1662, leaving a son, 
Samuel, who married Ann Rainsford about 
1675 ^^^ h^^ ^^^ sons, Samuel and Atherton, 
who died early in Hfe. Atherton Hough of Old 



:a 



i62 THE ROM ANTIC STORY OF 



Boston filled sundry civil offices in New Bos- 
ton; but there were no churchwardens there 
and no carven images to break on church 
towers. 

Richard Bellingham, the one-time Recorder 
of Old Boston, looms large in the New England 
life. He was made Deputy-Governor of Mas- 
sachusetts in 1635 and Governor in 1641; he 
was re-elected to that high office in 1654 and 
again in 1665, and remained in it till his death 
in December, 1672 1; he was then the last 
patentee named in the Charter and was eighty 
years of age. BelHngham married at Boston, 
for a second wife, Penelope Pelham, who sur- 
vived him thirty years, dying in 1702. This 
lady, Winthrop relates in his Journal (November 
9, 1641), was ''snatched from another," the 
Governor marrying her himself, much to the 
scandal of the magistrates. She was the sister 
of Herbert Pelham, a prominent citizen. The 
family, however, made Httle impression on Ameri- 
can history. Belhngham's eldest son, Samuel, 
lived at London most of his Hfe after graduating 
at Harvard; another son, John, was at Harvard 
in 1 66 1, but disappeared so completely that the 
date of his death is unrecorded in the College 

^Governor Bellingham after death was placed in the South burial- 
ground, afterwards known as " The Granary." An incident connected 
with the Bellingham tomb would seem to show that in early times the 
ground was ill-chosen for a cemetery. The Bellincham family having 
become extinct, the tomb was given to Governor James Sullivan, who, 
on going to repair it, found it partly filled with water, "and the coffin 
and remains of the old governor floating around in the ancient vault' 
— and this after being buried nearly a century. 





THE PURITAN FATHERS 163 

register. It is said of Richard Bellingham that 
he was "slow of speech" and "had a stern 
look." He was a rigid religious disciplinarian, 
and so opposed to outside interference that he 
prosecuted without mercy the Quakers, who 
presumably owed much of their punishment to 
him. Yet, while he strictly upheld the formal- 
ism of the Puritan worship, he is said to have 
been "a devout and sincere Christian"; while 
on his uprightness of character none has thrown 
doubt, and it has been claimed for him that he 
was more tolerant and merciful than many of 
his fellow-magistrates were, and that he and 
some of the magistrates exhibited on occasion 
less vindictiveness than the ministers did. But 
he was much given to melancholy moods, a con- 
dition which would not help to soften his natural 
austerity; and the evidence tends to prove that 
his reason eventually failed him. That happily 
was at the end only of his long and strenuous 
course; and the statement of the Quaker his- 
torian that he "died distracted" was unsympa- 
thetic, if not altogether untrue. 

The terrible fate of Bellingham's sister, Anne 
Hibbins, must have been a blow to him. It is 
somewhere hinted that her execution may have 
been intended as an admonition to BeHingham 
himself! If so, it was a poor way of showing 
resentment. Anne Hibbins was evidently un- 
popular; and the same can hardly be said of 
the man who was retained in the chief magis- 
tracy for so many years. "This venerable 




S^^^^^^^^ 



i64 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

witch-lady," Hawthorne dubs the persecuted 
widow; and he speaks of her as "that ugly- 
tempered lady," and "Old Mistress Hibbins, 
the bitter-tempered sister of the magistrate." 
Now "The Scarlet Letter" is not history; but 
it rests on tradition more or less, and it no doubt 
reflects something of the truth on this and other 
matters as it came to be handed down. We will 
eliminate the witch and allow that Mistress 
Hibbins was a scold. Her cruel death was not 
one whit the less an outrageous crime; and it 
can but be supposed that, if Bellingham was 
considered in connection with it, it was from a 
warped notion of requiting thereby his treat- 
ment of the Quakers. 

BeHingham was succeeded as Governor by 
John Leverett, son of Thomas, the husband of 
Hannah Hudson, who accompanied her parents 
to the Colony in 1635, and afterwards of Sarah 
Sedgwick. John had already been the military 
Major-General of the State for ten years when 
he was called on to follow Mr. Bellingham in 
the civil capacity. He remained Governor until 
his death in 1679. ^ curious story is related 
of Leverett. At the Restoration he returned 
to England as a kind of ambassador from the 
Colony and Charles H knighted him. But he 
was not proud of the distinction at all. The 
title was never used, and even the fact of 
the knighthood was concealed from the public. 
His son, Hudson, is reported to have "main- 
tained but an indifferent character"; but a 





Reproduced from an old Engraving, through the Courtesy of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society 

John Leverett 





THE PURITAN FATHERS 165 

second John Leverett came to be President of 
Harvard College. 

Of the Governor's daughters Elizabeth mar- 
ried Dr. Elisha Cooke; Anne espoused John 
Hubbard; Mary married first Paul Dudley (son 
of Governor Thomas Dudley), and secondly 
Colonel Penn Townsend; Hannah married 
Thomas Davis; Rebecca became Mrs. James 
Lloyd; and Sarah was the wife of Colonel 
Nathaniel Byfield. 

The next Governor of Massachusetts was 
another Lincolnshire man, Simon Bradstreet, 
who retained the office until 1686. He carried 
the earliest traditions of the Colony farthest into 
the future, for he was the last of its govern- 
ors before it became a royal province. "The 
Nestor of New England" they called him. Mr. 
Bradstreet married first Anne Dudley, the 
poetess (daughter of Thomas Dudley), and had 
a large family; his second wife was the niece of 
John Winthrop; he died at Salem eleven years 
after relinquishing the governorship. Brad- 
street, it will be remembered, went out to New 
England in 1630. 

Another colonist who came over with Winthrop 
was William Coddington, who was a prominent 
resident and merchant of Boston and is said to 
have built the first brick house erected in the 
town. A warm supporter of Mrs. Hutchinson, 
when Winthrop was elected over Vane in their 
memorable contest, he was dropped from the gov- 
ernment, but the freemen immediately returned 



i66 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 



'/A 



him as a deputy. In April, 1638, Coddington, 
with others, removed to the island of Aquid- 
neck and founded the State of Rhode Island. He 
was from Lincolnshire, and the Plymouth Dr. 
Fuller describes him as **a Boston man'*; his 
home was at Alford, but he associated with the 
Boston men in promoting their movement. 

One of John Cotton's fellow- voyagers of 1633, 
John Haynes, was a governor of both Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut, and died in 1654. 
Mr. Hooker, who went with him, had then been 
dead seven years; but Mr. Stone, another of 
the group, lived till 1663. 

Edmund Quincy, Cotton's Fishtoft compan- 
ion, died three years after the landing in America; 
he left a son of the same name, who was a mili- 
tary colonel in the Colony and lived till 1698; 
and from this son descended Josiah Quincy, Jr., 
a prominent figure in American history, and, 
in the female line, John Adams and John Quincy 
Adams, the second and sixth Presidents of the 
United States. 

Notable also in after years was the name 
of Hutchinson in America; it was preserved 
through the lad Edward, son of William and 
Anne Hutchinson, who accompanied John Cot- 
ton. Edward, when a more settled state of 
affairs enabled him to do so, returned to New 
Boston from Rhode Island; and his numerous 
descendants included Thomas Hutchinson, the 
famous Governor of Massachusetts Bay under 
the second Charter, and afterwards under the 



m 






ii 



if;' 



:;/ 







THE PURITAN FATHERS 167 

British Government, whose British sympathies 
at the revolutionary period naturally made him 
unpopular in the Colony, the history of which 
he wrote. Eventually he sailed for England, 
where he refused a baronetcy but accepted a 
life pension; he died at Brompton and was 
buried at Croydon. 

Another and a closer link with Old Boston 
had long before that been broken by the death 
in 1679 of Samuel Whiting, minister for forty- 
three years of Lynn, Mass., and formerly 
Rector of Skirbeck. He Hved to be eighty-two, 
and his wife, Elizabeth St. John of the old days, 
died at Lynn, only two years before him, at 
the age of seventy-two. Mr. Whiting's second 
son, John, was a graduate of Harvard College; 
and, returning to England, became in 1649 
Rector of Leverton near Boston, where both he 
and his wife Esther were buried on the same 
day, October 18, 1689. Samuel Whiting, a later 
representative of the family, was appointed 
Rector of the adjoining parish of Fishtoft in 
1 739, in which year the advowson of the rectory 
was assigned to James Whiting. Samuel died 
in 1 78 1, the last of his line in Old England in 
male descent; but the American branch of the 
family continued to flourish and spread and 
boasted among its sons the learned William 
Whiting, jurist and President of the New Eng- 
land Historical Society. 

We see here something of the importance of 
the contribution to American life and history 



lisii 



i68 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

of that mother of empire, Old Boston. To 
recall these names is to bring to mind the 
pioneer builders of the United States. Where 
they led, others followed; but the Puritan 
emigration as a distinctive movement ceased 
with the assembhng of the Long Parhament in 
England. The exodus is said by that time to 
have taken out fully twenty-one thousand, two 
hundred Enghsh men, women, and children to 
the great land of the West. During the twelve 
years of Laud*s administration, 1628-40, some 
four thousand persons fled from tyranny and 
persecution at home to the four settlements of 
New England. Many of them were disap- 
pointed in not finding there the ideal state of 
things they had believed to exist. The oppor- 
tunity of returning with renewed hope to the 
old country, now in revolt, must therefore not 
have been unwelcome to them. There were 
enterprises in Church and State which demanded 
just such men as these New England colonists. 
So that to some extent the tide of emigration 
flowed back from west to east, and those whom 
it carried with it threw themselves into the 
struggle, and fifled eventually, many of them, 
high places in the pubhc service.^ But while 
the Revolution in England drained away for 

' It was even suggested by certain of the Parliamentary leaders that 
a ship should be sent out to bring home John Cotton and other prominent 
colonists. This was not done; but Cromwell corresponded with the 
New England ministers, and in a letter " For my esteemed friend, IVF. 
Cotton" wrote: "Truly I am ready to serve you, and the rest of my 
brethren in the Church with you. Pray for me; salute all firesides, 
though unknown. I rest your affectionate friend." 



'i 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 169 

the time her manhood, it secured for Massachu- 
setts freedom of development in the years to 
come. And the Colonies in the meantime made 
good material progress. Towns and villages 
were on all hands springing up; an export trade 
in furs and timber was established; grain and 
cured fish were being carried to the West Indies; 
and in 1643 there were ships on the stocks of 
four hundred tons burden. A university, Har- 
vard College, was founded as early as 1636; by 
1652 the Colony had so far advanced as to set 
up its own coinage. 

All this, and more besides, in spite of the 
religious unrest, which righted itself in the end. 
After the first thirty years of relentless rule 
the government of the Colony was relaxed and 
assumed a milder character. Visionary and im- 
practicable as was the theocracy which under- 
lay the Puritan commonwealth, the experiment 
was inspired by a noble aim and was backed 
by intense earnestness and sincerity. And in a 
good deal that followed excuse can be found for 
its framers. It must be admitted that they 
had much to try them. Bigotry and intolerance 
were not the only factors in fashioning their 
conduct. Having neglected at the outset to 
secure themselves from the intrusion of obnoxious 
strangers, and being morbidly apprehensive lest 
their enterprise should be frustrated before it 
could strike root, they devised measures of 
repression which speedily led to injustice and 
cruelty. It is to be remembered also that at 



170 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

home, where there seemed less reason for dread- 
ing the influences of fanaticism and the ingenu- 
ities of heresy, the powers anticipated the course 
here pursued in dealing with the same class of 
ofl'enders. The penalties of fining, impris- 
onment, scourging, and mutilation inflicted in 
Boston were, after all, only imitations of those 
practised in England. 

The age was steeped in superstition, that 
handmaid of persecution and cruelty. Laud, 
the last advocate of judicial torture in Eng- 
land, was so prone to it that his life seems to 
have been passed in terror of the omens of iH- 
luck which the incidents of his days, and espe- 
ciaHy the dreams of his nights, were continuafly 
suggesting to his distorted fancy. Macaulay 
in a wefl-known passage quotes a number of 
these ominous visions from entries in Laud's 
own diary. If this spirit could thrive so well 
at home, how much more was it not likely 
to flourish in New England? It concentrated 
itself strongly in the narrow and gloomy fife 
of the colonist community, whose rulers were 
ever on the alert for visible and invisible foes. 
The former appeared in the persons of here- 
tics and "erratic spirits'* against the craft and 
subtlety of which they said the people must 
be protected. The latter had their shape in the 
biblical "familiar spirits," and "wizards that 
peep and that mutter," which it was imagined 
might well be lurking with malevolent design in 
the fastnesses of this wilderness abode. 



w 



J < 



»^ 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 171 

After the Antinomians came the Anabaptists, 
and then the Quakers, with their "illumina- 
tions," their ''inspirations," and their "revela- 
tions," to plague the magistrates and ministers. 
Of the Quakers, who were dealt with at Boston 
from 1656 to six years onward — Cotton Mather 
called them "an enchanted people" — they had 
heard with horror and dread ten years before 
any of them set foot in the Colony. Upon them, 
in vindication of their outraged authority, they 
followed up their penal inflictions through ban- 
ishments, imprisonments, fines, scourgings, and 
mutilations, to the crowning crime of hanging 
four of them upon the gallows, a barbarity 
which darkly stains the early pages of New Eng- 
land's history. John Norton, who, four years 
after the death of Cotton, had come from Ipswich 
to be his successor, exercised a baleful influence 
in these proceedings. 

Not only did these rugged rulers of an infant 
State put down with a high hand all teaching 
which they deemed to be false and unscriptural, 
but their dogmas and disciplines harassed and 
oppressed their own people. The inquisitorial 
severity of the Church made it almost^^as diffi- 
cult to retain membership as it was to secure it; 
and the Church itself was rent with schisms over 
abstruse points of doctrine and wrangled about 
theological terms which were soon to become 
obsolete. Its leaders revefled in disputes con- 
fined to the exposition and interpretation of 
Holy Writ; but once the argument was taken 



172 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

out of the Bible they found themselves at a 
disadvantage, and fell back upon more drastic 
methods of settling the question. 

With all their faults these men were fearless. 
Intolerance was their besetting sin. Their 
methods were as rigid as themselves. "The 
Puritan mode of worship and service," as Dr. 
Ellis said in speaking to their Church two 
hundred and fifty years after it was founded, 
"severely naked and unwinning as it was, met 
the occasion and the time in its strain upon the 
austere and intense favour of spirit in those 
exiles. But with softening and enriching ex- 
periences, it proved blank and drear. It was 
suited to men stern and earnest in their pitch 
and style of piety — hardly nutritive, winning, 
or wreathed enough for women, and ineffective, 
juiceless, and repulsive for children. The *MiIk 
for Babes,' provided by the first teacher, John 
Cotton, was highly concentrated, and not easily 
assimilated for nutriment." Yet somehow they 
thrived upon it. They may have been cold of 
conduct if not of temperament, grim and grace- 
less outwardly, and "sour-visaged"; but acidity 
is not without its value, for the sour leaven 
ferments the wheat, which makes the wholesome 
bread, the staff of hfe. May the leaven of 
Puritanism long be retained! 

In spite of their shortcomings, we cannot but 
admire the Puritan stock for their grand 
quahties and for the great results they achieved 
for civil and religious hberty. Out of such living 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 173 

stones were the foundations of freedom laid. 
**It was to this sect,'* says the historian Hume, 
"that the English," and he might have added 
the Americans, "owe the whole freedom of their 
constitution." "The Puritans," writes Hallam 
— that son of later Old Boston, where his mem- 
ory is perpetuated in the church — "were 
the depositaries of the sacred fire of liberty." 
Gone is the intolerance of the seventeenth 
century; but have we in the twentieth their 
sturdy, unflinching faith? Their theocracy re- 
ceived its death-blow in 1664 with the repeal 
of the law restricting the franchise to church 
members; finally it died out twenty years after 
when the Colony lost its Charter and passed 
under royal sway. 

After the Revolution more and more diver- 
sity characterised the religious life of Boston. 
Revolt from the civil authority brought with 
it changes in the recognised order of religion. 
This was inevitable, because the established 
church, of New England, the Calvinistic Congre- 
gationalism handed on from the Puritan Fathers, 
was protected by civil laws and supported by 
the community. Church and State were one. 
But now the Puritan Church was disestabhshed. 
There was on the one hand a growth of Kberty 
of thought and speech, and the old faith largely 
gave place to the new theology. The old 
orthodoxy was broadened and brightened and 
made more genial and attractive; worship was 
remodelled and modernised. 




/\ 



ii^ 



174 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

Attempts to introduce the Prayer-book service 
to New England were at first made in vain, but 
after a time its advocates prevailed, and for 
two years the Old South was by arrangement 
used alternately by Puritans and Episcopalians. 
The first Prayer-book service was held in Boston 
in 1686, when Robert RatchfFe, a clergyman who 
had come out in the Rose frigate, which brought 
the commissions of the new administrators on 
the withdrawal of the Colonial charter, preached 
in the Townhouse and read Common Prayer in 
his surphce, "which was so great a novelty to 
the Bostonians that he had a very large audi- 
ence.'* Cotton's son-in-law. Increase Mather, 
referred to the Prayer-book services as "Those 
broken Responds and shreds of Prayers which 
the Priests and People toss between them like 
Tennis Balls"; but this did not diminish the 
desire of many for a mutual and common ser- 
vice in which all took part. King's Chapel was 
opened in 1689; the first wooden structure gave 
place to a stone church in 1754; and until the 
revolt of the Colonies it remained the home of 
the Church of England in America. 

Meanwhile Christ Church had been built in 
1722. Though it was closed at the outset of the 
war and not regularly used until 1 778, it rendered 
an important service to the patriot cause, for 
from the window of its tower, on the night of 
April 18, 1775, flashed the signal lights which 
sent Paul Revere on his famous ride. Trinity, 
the third Episcopal church in Boston, then of 



M 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 175 

plain wood, was opened for service in 1735. It 
was replaced in 1828 by a Gothic building, 
destroyed by fire in 1872; and the present im- 
pressive edifice was consecrated in 1 877. Trinity 
Church has the proud distinction of being one 
of the few churches in the North which joined 
in the patriotic movement for independence. 
Since those times the Episcopal Church in 
Boston — the heart of the diocese of Massa- 
chusetts — has kept pace with the life of the 
city, and Puritanism has been no barrier to its 
growth. 

Through all the chances and changes of the 
intervening years, the veteran First Church in 
Boston still exists and is a flourishing institu- 
tion. The progress which those years have wit- 
nessed is marked by the wide difference between 
the house set up by Winthrop and his associates, 
the low building with its mud walls and thatched 
roof, which stood at the juncture of State and 
Devonshire Streets, and the fine modern sanctu- 
ary of their successors at the corner of Berkeley 
and Marlborough Streets. The original records 
of covenant and membership are still there pre- 
served; while stained into an illuminated window 
is a representation of the covenant, "so calmly 
and sweetly worded in our dear old English 
tongue." At the portal of this house, the fifth 
since 1632, stands the effigy of Governor Win- 
throp, who worshipped under Cotton until 
nearly the end of his ministry; and here in 
1907 was done the crowning honour to the name 



("^ 



I 



176 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

and fame of John Cotton in America, when 
a handsome memorial, enclosing a recumbent 
statue in marble, was raised to the Puritan 
divine who "gave form and inspiration to the 
ecclesiastical polity known as the New Eng- 
land Way," of which he was the champion and 
defender. Presented by living descendants 
of him whose lifework it commemorates, the 
monument was transferred to the church on 
October 10, just two hundred and seventy- 
four years after his appointment as teacher, at 
a service which was attended by members of 
the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, the 
Massachusetts and the Arlington Historical 
Societies, and kindred bodies. The gathering 
was in fact one of Cotton's descendants, pres- 
ent or represented to the tenth generation. In 
their name (after an address by the Reverend 
Paul Revere Frothingham, referred to earlier in 
this chapter) formal transfer of the memorial was 
made by the Hon. Charles F. Adams, LL.D., its 
chief promoter. It was accepted on behalf of the 
church by its minister, the Reverend Charles 
E. Park, himself a descendant of Cotton on the 
female side. Although Mr. Adams, with a reso- 
lution to be just, which some of us consider car- 
ried him too far, had as an historian described 
John Cotton as the "Inquisitor in Chief" of the 
early Colony — adding that he searched out 
every form of heresy and exercised a rigid disci- 
pline over men's opinions, and speaking of "an 
ignominious page in an otherwise worthy life" — 




i 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 177 

he nevertheless allowed in this commemoration 
that Cotton stands conspicuously forth with 
Winthrop as the great typical exponent of the 
spiritual and civil polity which is identified with 
the name of New England. The claim for John 
Cotton made by these descendants is that to 
Massachusetts, and through Massachusetts to 
New England and America, he was what Luther 
was to Germany, what Calvin was to France and 
the Low Countries, what Knox was to Scotland 
— a great, far-reaching, formative influence. 





The Cotton Memorial in the First Church, Boston, Mass., 
Erected bv John Cotton's Descendants in 1907 



The inscription over the monument says of Cotton: "Regardless of preferment and 
conspicuous as a Puritan Dicine he became the object of Prelatical Persecution. ' In- 
awed by influence and unbribed by yain' he then sought refuge in New England. 
Scholar — Theologian — Preacher — Publicist — he gave form and inspiration to 
the Ecclesiastical Polity known as ' The New England Way.' Preceptor and Friend of 
Vane, from him Cromwell sought counsel. Living, he was revered as ' That Apostle of 
his Age.' Dead, he is remembered as 'Patriarch of the Massachusetts Theocracy.'" 
Built into the base below the recumbent figure </ the Memorial is a fragment vf the 
original stonework of the great West doorway of old Boston Church. 



'^^^s^^^^ 



X 

BOSTON: EAST AND WEST 

And thus the Old and New World reached their hands 

Across the water, and the friendly lands 

Talked ivith each other from their severed strands. 

— Whittier 



"^HE war which resulted in the American 
Colonies throwing off the British yoke 

,i happily led to no ultimate or permanent 
estrangement of the peoples of the two countries, 
who in race and blood are one, claiming a com- 
mon ancestry, speaking the same tongue, pos- 
sessing similar sentiments, united still, as Burke 
said of the relationship in the House of Commons 
at the time of the rupture, by "ties which, 
though light as air, are strong as links of iron." 
Good feehng has generally prevailed, and the 
bond of union between the nations, though one 
of kindred only, has survived in strengthened 
form the test of time. 

If this be true, as it unquestionably is, of the 
relations of England and America, how much 
more forcibly may it not be stated of those of 
the two Bostons. For the Boston of Massa- 
chusetts in the West was named after the Boston 
of Lincolnshire in the East; the parent town 
has always taken a proud interest in the progress 
and welfare of the beautiful city by the Charles 





i82 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 



River; and the daughter community has equally 
displayed a deep interest in and veneration for 
the mother. Well may Old Boston be proud 
of her Puritan progeny across the seas — of 
Massachusetts, the first State in the world to 
free the slaves; of Boston, the intellectual 
metropolis of the American Republic, while 
Washington is its governmental and New York 
its commercial capital. Associations practical 
as well as sentimental draw closely together the 
two Bostons, both seaports, the one with a glori- 
ous past reaching back through the centuries, the 
other with a great present, and each with its 
historic struggle for freedom. 

The country all around the English Boston 
is full of strange interest. The adjacent sea 
washes a coast-line as flat as the fens to which 
St. Botolph's tower, a noble landmark yet, 
was once as important a beacon to landsmen as 
to sailors. For many a long year after the 
Normans had conquered the Saxon land the 
native islanders stood out in this district, often 
going forth to meet the foe on stilts, so that, 
having delivered their assault, they could re- 
treat in safety into the fastnesses of their reed- 
fields, meres, and marshes.' The aspect of the 
country to-day is very much like the Dutch 

^The Isle of Ely, defended by Hereward, son of Leofric, Lord of 
Bourne, was not the only portion of the Fens which opposed the army 
of the Conqueror. The district about Boston, being "very strong by 
abundance of water," furnished bold men — the Hollands, the Wells, 
and the Kymes — wlio resisted the invaders, and, on the testimony of 
George Holland, given in 1563, "kept out the Conqueror by force." 



.^. 




J 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 183 

lands of the Anglo-Dutch pioneers of Massa- 
chusetts. It is a little world of dykes and sluices, 
of meads and rivers, a vast flat, dotted here 
and there with ancient homesteads and pic- 
turesque market towns. 

Charles Kingsley knew and loved his Lin- 
colnshire well. Although Devonshire born, he 
passed part of his youth in the Fens, and was 
familiar with the south of the county from The 
Wash "by Botulfston Deeps" to Spalding town, 
and Crowland and Bourne, and with the border- 
ing country around Peterborough (old Mede- 
hampstead) and the Isle of Ely; and we find 
his knowledge, historical and geographical, fully 
displayed in his novel of the days of the Con- 
queror, **Hereward the Wake, Last of the Eng- 
lish." This masterly work, the last of Kingsley's 
romances, portrays as does no other the wild 
and lawless life of the wide untamed fens, the 
Land of the Girvii. It brings us into close per- 
sonal touch with the famous Lady Godiva, whose 
memory is immortalised in connection with 
Coventry, where her bones rest in her minster- 
church beside those of her husband, Leofric, 
Lord of Bourne and Earl of Mercia. The 
tragedy of their heroic son, Hereward, and his 
once-beloved Torfrida lies buried with them 
under the green turf eastward of the ruined nave 
of Crowland Abbey, where once the high altar 
stood. The name of Algar, first-born of Leofric 
and Lady Godiva, is perpetuated in Algarkirk 
near Boston; his son, Edwin, dwelt in the neigh- 



i84 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

bouring hamlet of Kirton, and Morcar, his 
second-born, is called to mind by the Morkery 
Woods, named after him, near Stamford. The 
Wakes of Bourne were descendants of the hap- 
less Hereward, and the graves of departed Wakes 
may be found among the tombstones in Boston 
churchyard. A Jacob Wake was master of the 
Grammar School — then the "old school house" 
off Wormgate in Boston — about 1440. 

Lord Tennyson, Lincolnshire's own Laureate 

— whose name hnks the two worlds with a 
poet's known on one side of the Atlantic as inti- 
mately as on the other, that of Longfellow 

— was "native and to the manner born"; and 
his poetic temperament and genius absorbed all 
that is beautiful and inspiring in a vast plain. 
One may walk in the footsteps of Tennyson in 
the Lincolnshire wolds and fens and fix some 
of his most striking pictures and the things that 
have inspired his subhmest thoughts. 

Gray old grange, or lonely field. 
Or low morass and whispering reed, 
Or simple stile from mead to mead, 

Or sheep-walk up the lonely wold. 

This is Lincolnshire to the core; and so also is 
that poetic vignette in which one may almost 
feel the atmosphere round about the ancient 
Boston which stretches forth friendly hands to 
the Massachusetts city: 

A league of grass washed by a slow, broad stream, 
That stirred with languid pulses of the oar. 



■ j^- 




Photograph by Hackford, Boston 

Interior of the Cotton Chapel, St. Botolph's, Boston, 

England 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 185 

Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on, 
Barge-laden to three arches of a bridge 
Crowned with the minster towers. 

It is in the direction of Tennyson*s moods 
that Nathaniel Hawthorne exhibits his best 
work. He found inspiration in the repose of 
Salem as Tennyson did at Somersby in Lincoln- 
shire, and in his quiet retreat away from the 
bustle and excitement of city life. To many 
the story of "The Scarlet Letter" is as real as 
that of the "Boston Massacre," or the story of 
the "Boston Tea- Party," and far more familiar 
than the adventures and quarrels of Winthrop 
and Dudley. Hester Prynne and Dimmesdale 
will probably outlive the pioneer; they are better 
known everywhere. 

The kinship of the two Bostons has in later 
years been marked in many ways, and the affec- 
tion of her Western daughter for Mother Boston 
has found frequent and warm expression. Fol- 
lowing the restoration in 1853 of the grand old 
parish church on the banks of the Witham, the 
chapel was repaired and renovated and a memo- 
rial placed upon its walls to John Cotton, chiefly 
by the liberality of American descendants of 
Mr. Cotton in the female line and others; and 
this southwest adjunct of the church has since 
been known as the Cotton Chapel. Here the 
life-work of the Puritan Vicar is recorded, 
and his name and fame are perpetuated by 
a stately Latin inscription (written by the 
Hon. Edward Everett of New Boston, a de- 



9 





c^ 



i86 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

scendant of Cotton) which, done freely into 
verse, ^ reads: 

That here John Cotton's memory may survive 
Where for so long he laboured when ahve. 
In James's reign — and Charles's, ere it ceased — 
A grave, skilled, learned, earnest parish priest; 
Till from the strife that tossed the Church of God 
He in a new world sought a new abode. 
To a new England — a new Boston — came, 
(That took to honour him that rev'rend name) 
Fed the first flock of Christ that gathered there — 
Till death deprived it of its Shepherd's care — 
There well resolved all doubts of minds perplext, 
Whether with cares of this world, or the next: 
Two centuries five lustra, from the year 
That saw the exile leave his labours here. 
His family, his townsmen, with delight — 
(Whom to the task their English kin invite) — 
To the fair fane he served so well of yore. 
His name, in two worlds honoured, thus restore. 
This chapel renovate, this tablet place. 
In this the year of man's recovered Grace, 

1855. 

The corbels supporting the panelled timber 
ceiling of the Chapel are carved with the arms 
of early colonists of New England. Originally 
the memorial brass stood at the east end of the 
building, but in 1906 the altar was replaced and 
the tablet removed to the south wall. 

On through the years the sentiment which 
animates the two Bostons has from time to 
time been strikingly manifested. It was so in 
1879, when Canon Blenkin, the Vicar, pre- 

1 By Mr. Richard Newcomb, an old Boston scholar. 






THE PURITAN FATHERS 187 

sented part of the original tracery of an ancient 
window, removed from the chancel of St. 
Botolph's, to Trinity Church of the New 
Boston, where it was reverently placed in a 
cloister **as a precious memorial of the Church 
of our Fathers." 

The authorities of St. Botolph's of that day 
committed the sacrilegious act of destroying 
this grand old window in order to make a 
modern organ chamber. Americans had more 
reverence for the discarded fragments than the 
people of Old Boston had entertained for the 
beautiful window itself. Two years before 
the transfer of these stones an American visitor, 
seeing them piled in a corner of the church, 
asked whether they would be again used, and 
finding there was no hkehhood of their being 
placed in any other part of the fabric, "expressed 
in the strongest manner," says the local chron- 
icler, "the dehght it would give him to be the 
means of introducing them to some church in 
Boston, Mass., especially mentioning the last 
built and the noblest, the Church of the Trinity," 
of which the Reverend Philhps Brooks was then 
Rector. We are not told who the American 
visitor was, but he had his way, for after some 
correspondence the tracery was despatched to 
the New Boston, and in December, 1879, our 
chronicler had the pleasant duty of recording 
"another of those interchanges of courtesy and 
kindly feeling between Boston in England and 
Boston in America which have of late years 



^^^^m 



i88 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

not unfrequently occurred and have tended so 
much to maintain a spirit of affectionate rela- 
tionship between the mother town and the 
daughter city.'* St. Botolph's had been noti- 
fied of the safe reception of the stonework, and 
its careful and permanent incorporation into a 
conspicuous part of the corridor of Trinity 
Church, with the addition of a brass plate setting 
forth its history and the circumstances under 
which it came into its present position. The 
Rector, churchwardens, and vestry of Trinity 
spoke of **the great value which attaches in 
New England to anything associated with the 
name of John Cotton," and added "For our- 
selves and for the church which we represent we 
acknowledge a pecuhar gratification in affixing 
to our new walls so welcome a reminder of our 
mother country and of our Mother Church, for 
whose prosperity and welfare we shall ever pray.'* 
The Rector himself wrote, saying, "The gift has 
attracted the interest not only of our own parish- 
ioners, but of all our citizens. So far as I know, it 
is the only relic of the Lincolnshire Boston which 
exists in its Massachusetts namesake.'* 

In the following year, 1880, cordial greetings 
passed from East to West at the two hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church in 
Boston, Mass. A pleasing incident marks the 
memories of that year. Dr. Rufus Ellis, then 
minister of the First Church, was in October 
returning from a European tour with his wife 
and daughters when he called at the Lincoln- 



K? 






THE PURITAN FATHERS 189 

shire Boston, and there received official wel- 
come. Vicar Blenkin and his clergy, the Mayor 
of that day (Mr. Thorns), the heads of the 
Unitarian community, and others vied in doing 
the visitors honour. They were hospitably en- 
tertained. They duly worshipped at the town's 
pilgrim shrines, "our grand old parish church 
of course, as is usual with all real Americans, 
attracting most attention," reads the chronicle 
of the visit, "and to its beauties and treasures a 
good deal of time was devoted." 

Transcripts of various documents, including 
the marriage register of John Cotton, were made 
for the strangers. By . the Lecturer of St. 
Botolph's much valuable information was given 
respecting the church and its history, "and care- 
fully noted for future reference in the New 
World." Then Mr. Hackford, the clerk, an 
authority on such matters, had much to com- 
municate, "not only of historical lore, but 
descriptions of the more famous features of the 
church." Records preserved in the Library 
over the south porch were next attentively ex- 
amined, special notice being taken of the bap- 
tismal and other registers of the time of Cotton, 
to which the autograph of the exiled Vicar is 
attached. Even the services of the church 
organist, in his new-found nook in the demol- 
ished chancel window space, were called into 
requisition; and the music lost nothing of its 
wonted dehght from the intruding position of 
the instrument. 



^^^m 




190 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

"Dr. Ellis had been asked to obtain if pos- 
sible something of interest from Old Boston ere 
he returned to the United States; so Mr. Hack- 
ford presented to him a small old carved oak 
boss, formerly an ornament of the original 
roof, which was removed in the year 1662." 
The Unitarian congregation, through their 
minister, asked his acceptance of an engraving 
of St. Botolph's Church, and photographic and 
literary souvenirs. Finally a large company 
assembled to bid the travellers farewell; and 
they doubtless carried with them across the At- 
lantic the happiest of memories of their visit to 
Old Boston. Dr. Ellis indeed afterwards wrote 
saying how deeply interested his congregation 
had been in his account of the visit, and stating 
that the gifts handed to him would be carefully 
preserved in accordance with a vote of his 
church. 

There was a strong revival of this good feeling 
in 1883 during the mayoralty of Mr. William 
Bedford, one of the most attached friends of the 
American Boston in later times. Mr. Bedford 
had a long and interesting correspondence with 
the Bostonian Society, and entertained from 
time to time leading Bostonians who visited the 
mother country, and his portrait, sent out with 
other tokens of goodwill in those days, still 
hangs upon the Old State House walls. 

Eight and twenty years after these events, in 
the spring of 191 1, the author met this genial 
Old Bostonian at Alan House, his beautiful 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 191 

home, and chatted with him on the subject of 
his relations, while Mayor, with the American 
Boston. He said he had always looked back 
upon that intercourse as the pleasantest feature 
of his mayoralty. "I recall it with the greatest 
pleasure," he declared, beaming with the recol- 
lection; "it gave me more dehght than anything 
else I know of at that time." Although over 
eighty, Mr. Bedford was hearty, if not active 
still, and as mentally alert as ever, and his 
reminiscences of New Boston people were most 
entertaining. "An old age serene and bright" 
was the happy lot of this veteran pubhc servant 
— he had only just yielded up his place as Alder- 
man in the Boston Corporation — who, having 
played a manly and upright part in shaping his 
town's affairs (and at the same time amassed a 
private fortune by commercial enterprise and 
integrity), was now, at the end of his useful 
career, enjoying a well-earned repose, still, how- 
ever, in touch and sympathy with the concerns 
of life and full of love for Boston's namesake 
across the Atlantic, which, had he lived three 
hundred years ago, he would probably have had 
a hand in shaping too, so like was he in spirit to 
the men who did it. 

The association was revived in August, 1895, 
when Old Boston received an official visit from 
the late Mr. Bayard, the first Ambassador to 
Great Britain from the United States, who dis- 
tributed the year's prizes at the venerable 
Grammar School and attended a banquet given 



j^i^^Sc:.-, 






THE ROM ANT I C STORY OF 

in his honour by the Mayor and Corporation, 
who presented him with an address. The occa- 
sion was memorable and also significant. One 
of the most distinguished Americans of his day 

or of modern times — the Hon. T. F. Bayard, 
could trace his Hneage back to the same family 
as that of the "ideal of chivalry," the "Chevalier 
sans peur et sans reproche." There was some- 
thing peculiarly appropriate about the visit. 
For his Huguenot ancestors left their homes to 
settle in America for the same reason as the 
founders of New England — freedom of thought 
and of worship; and as Washington's repre- 
sentative to London he typified to Old Boston 
the greatness and the power of which tPie Mas- 
sachusetts Bay Colony was the beginning. His 
presence, moreover, and the testimonies which 
accompanied it, stamped the reality of the asso- 
ciation and served to knit closer the ties of 
kinship between East and West. 

Very happily, and in language which deserves 
to be remembered, Mr. Bayard voiced the feel- 
ing of tender regard for Old Boston. "This 
Boston — this Boston of old England — is the 
mother and the namegiver of a younger and a 
stronger Boston far away across the sea. And 
yet the younger and the stronger Boston, the 
city that holds perhaps one half-million of in- 
habitants, owes so much, how much cannot be 
fully stated or measured, to the little town of 
twenty thousand people that preserves its exist- 
ence and holds its own on this side of the At- 




^^- 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 

lantic. If, looking round these impressive struc- 
tures, these buildings that challenge the respect 
of those who survey them, you are tempted to 
exclaim mater pulcrior filia, I think if you 
look across the ocean and see the fresh, strong, 
vigorous, picturesque city that bears the name 
of Boston there, you would exclaim mater 
pulchra filia pulcrior. But between the Old 
Boston and the New Boston there has run a 
current of feeling, not noisy, not violent, not 
sensational, but quiet and strong and true. The 
Old Boston and the New Boston have both been 
nourished upon the same diet of religion, of morals, 
and of literature. The Bible that your fore- 
fathers read, and that you read, is the same Bible 
that is read, and always was read, in the New 
Boston of America. The ingrained love of per- 
sonal liberty is just the same on the other side 
of the Atlantic as it was and is, and pray God 
always may be, respected and cherished on this 
side of the Atlantic." 

We live, he said, under different governments, 
we pursue the same results by possibly different 
methods of administration, but the principles of 
truth, of honour, of duty are the same on both 
sides of the Atlantic. The school in which they 
were met he described as one of the nurseries 
of thought, of feeling, of national sentiment, all 
guided by the paths of education into higher 
and greater usefulness. 

Mr. Bayard was asked by the Borough 
Member to accept a copy of the "History of 



194 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

Boston," and on receiving it he observed with 
pleasure that among the books he had just dis- 
tributed were many American works — books 
by Holmes, Emerson, and Prescott, men who 
had carried forward into the New World the 
honour and the reputation of the Old. And he 
reminded them of the verse in which Emerson, 
speaking of the New Boston, says : 

The rocky nook from headlands three 

Looks eastward to the farms. 
And twice each day the loving sea 

Takes Boston in its arms. 

"Now the sea does not take Boston in its arms 
here in England," added the Ambassador, "but 
you have given me a Boston that I can take to my 
arms. I do take it to my arms, and I assure you 
that I take it to my heart." A touching allusion 
to a valued gift that went to the hearts of all who 
heard it. The address presented to him at the 
town's banquet was aptly and warmly worded 
and as feelingly acknowledged by Mr. Bayard. 

It was, by the way, at this banquet that Mr. 
Bayard innocently brought upon his diplomatic 
head the resentful wrath of a section of American 
politicians. A paragraph published in a leading 
London newspaper stated with brutal brevity 
that the Ambassador, in responding to the toast 
of President Cleveland's health, declared that 
the Americans were a violent people. This 
startling indictment was promptly cabled to 
America, where it caused considerable commo- 
tion. The question came before the Senate at 





THE PURITAN FATHERS 195 

Washington, the Minister was fiercely assailed, 
and his resignation was demanded. He officially 
explained his words, or rather the absence of 
them in the offending paragraph, and the excite- 
ment eventually subsided. What Mr. Bayard 
really said was that the office of President was 
one of great responsibihty and anxiety and no 

bed of roses"; for, observed the speaker, **he 
stands in the midst of a strong, self-confident, 
and oftentimes violent people — men who seek 
to have their own way, and men who seek fre- 
quently to have that way obstructed, and I tell you 
plainly that it takes a real man to govern the 
people of the United States." It certainly does. 

Less than a year after Mr. Bayard's visit — 
in the June of 1896 — a party of American 
Congregationalists landed at Plymouth and 
made their way to the Lincolnshire town. Led 
by the Reverend Dr. Dunning of Boston, Mass., 
they numbered nearly fifty, including represent- 
atives of the National Council of American 
Congregational Churches. First they went to 
Exeter, then to another cathedral city. Wells, 
and so on to Glastonbury, rich in ecclesiastical 
lore; Sahsbury Cathedral attracted them; so did 
grand old Winchester; Oxford, Bedford, London, 
Canterbury, Cambridge, Ely saw the pilgrim 
band. Boston warmly welcomed them. At an 
official luncheon they were met — in that same 
hotel which Hawthorne anathematised forty 
years before, but now the Peacock and Royal, 
with a will to sustain its name — by the Mayor 





196 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

and the Town Clerk, the Vicar and local leaders 
of Nonconformity. 

The Vicar, Canon Stephenson — successor of 
Canon Blenkin, equally "a scholar and a Chris- 
tian, and fit to be a bishop" — spoke for the 
Estabhshed Church, and what he said did him 
honour. It was worthy of John Cotton's suc- 
cessor in the pulpit of Boston. "We all wel- 
come to old Boston this distinguished company 
as representing a nation that we feel is one with 
us. I can never look upon the Americans in 
any way as strangers; I feel that they are 
brethren." He told of his own stay in the 
American Boston — **the illustrious daughter of 
this old mother, who yet is in a prosperous 
state" — where his friendly guide was Philhps 
Brooks, who once had preached in Old Boston 
Church. "I have special pleasure in being 
present to-day, not merely on the grounds of 
our common race, common blood, and common 
language, but also I feel that you represent a 
body who do a great part in leading the rehgious 
convictions and the rehgious education and 
training of America, and that you give your- 
selves heartily to the principle of doing all you 
can to extend and exemphfy the fact that it is 
righteousness alone that exalteth a nation.^ I 

'This is true enough. In spite of "modern" notions, much of the 
old Puritan leaven remains in the great Republic. In "The Scarlet 
Letter" Hawthorne has given us a wonderful picture of the hard, grim, 
graceless, but heroic Hfe of the early settlers in New England. From 
these dour old Puritans the cosmopoHtan America of to-day inherits 
its finest moral qualities. 







' 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 197 

am a devoted, and I hope a loyal member of the 
Church of England, but the strength of my own 
rehgious convictions leads me heartily to respect 
the rehgious convictions of other people. We 
have learnt not a Httle since the old days in the 
matter of rehgious toleration. Since the Puritan 
Fathers left these shores to find an asylum over 
there in America things have altered much. 
Toleration was not known by any party then; 
it is entirely a new thing. But however much 
we differ as to rehgious tenets from the Puritan 
Fathers and the Pilgrims, I venture to say that 
we have still a great deal to learn from them. 
We may have something to teach our fore- 
fathers—at least we think so; but there is a 
great deal we may learn from the old Puritans: 
the supremacy of the conscience at any sacrifice, 
earnest zeal for the glory of God and the purity 
of His Church, and a strong, real hold of the 
essential verities of the Christian faith. I be- 
lieve we have a great deal to learn from them, 
and I think we are learning from them." The 
lesson of their hves — of their failures and mis- 
takes, as well as their reality and sacrifice — is 
indeed worth heeding still. 

Phillips Brooks, when he spoke at the two 
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the First 
Church in New Boston, carried the argument a 
step further. Rector of Trinity and Bishop of 
Massachusetts, he was prouder still of his descent 
from John Cotton, his very great-grandfather. 
"I thank him as a Church of England man,'* 



^^= 



198 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

said he, *'as a man loving the Episcopal Church 
with all my heart, I thank him for being a 
Puritan. The Church of England has no men 
to thank to-day more devoutly. She has no 
men to whom she ought to be more grateful 
to-day than to the Puritans who told her in 
the seventeenth century how degraded her life 
was becoming." The tribute was as sincere 
as it was well deserved, and it will be widely 
endorsed. 

The cordiahty of their reception was acknowl- 
edged on behalf of these pilgrims by Dr. Dunning. 
"Old Boston is our home," said he, **and we 
feel that we have come back to the land to 
which we belong. It was a Vicar of Old Boston 
that practically founded the city of New Boston. 
I suppose we may accept the opinion that the 
successors of John Cotton have preached as well 
as he did, for we have abundant testimony that 
they do." Evidence of which was present be- 
fore them in the wise Christian utterances of 
the Vicar of St. Botolph's. 

The sentiments expressed by Dr. Dunning 
were re-echoed by the Hon. Jonathan A. Lane, 
who, as chairman of the Merchants' Municipal 
Committee and a member of ** Mayor Quincy's 
cabinet," claimed to fairly represent the city 
of Boston, "that lusty daughter of yours, you 
being the mother of all the Bostons, just as 
Plymouth is the mother of all the Plymouths; 
your child has grown to half-a-milhon inhabi- 
tants, and is about the fifth city of our Union." 




V/4 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 199 

Speaking of the heartiness of their welcome 
everywhere, **We have a genuine love for the 
people of England," declared Mr. Lane, "and 
we hope that the good feehng created by this 
pilgrimage will be permanent in its value. I 
think we are not so inconsequential but we may 
be able to exert some wholesome influence be- 
tween mother and child, between the Old World 
and the New. The more we see of you in these 
our peregrinations, the more I beheve that we 
are one." He concluded with the words: **I 
have to thank, on behalf of the New Boston, our 
mother, the old lady, whom to-day we most 
heartily embrace"; a robust, filial figure of 
speech which had the warmth of true afl'ection 
behind it. 

The visitors were shown over the famous parish 
church, where the Cotton Chapel had a special 
interest for them; its commemorative character 
and past associations were explained by the 
Vicar. Then an impressive incident occurred. 
Assembled in the lofty chancel of the ancient 
fane, these representative New Bostonians, de- 
scendants, many of them, of the men who sufl^ered 
hereabouts for their faith and testimony in the 
dark days of old, united in singing Watts' soul- 
stirring hymn, grandly worded and wedded to ma- 
jestic music, **0 God our help in ages past," the 
swelling strains of which filled with praise and 
thanksgiving the sanctuary of their forefathers. 

Next the historic Guildhall, with its quaint 
chambers and curious kitchens and Pilgrim 




200 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 



Father cells, was inspected; and, having looked 
over the Grammar School, time-worn and tena- 
cious of tradition, built forty-five years before 
Cotton came to Boston, the travellers bade fare- 
well to a town stored with memories especially 
dear to them, and went on their pilgrim way. 

The year following — the June of 1897 — saw 
in Old Boston Dr. Lawrence, Bishop of Massa- 
chusetts, of which diocese New Boston is the 
centre; and the eloquent and touching language 
in which he recalled the relationship was a fresh 
reminder of the ties uniting the two Bostons. 
What the bishop's thoughts were on his entering 
John Cotton's pulpit may be judged by what 
fell from his own lips: 

"You little reahse what it is for one born in 
Boston in the United States, a citizen of Boston, 
the Bishop not only of Boston, but of the State 
of which Boston is the capital — you Httle 
reahse, I say, with what deep emotion he comes 
here and looks in the faces of you who are citi- 
zens of old Boston, and recalls to mind what the 
newer Boston owes to you, with what sympathy 
it turns towards you, and with what sincerity it 
tells you that we are brethren — brethren not 
only in Christ and in the Church, but brethren 
in race, in blood, in free institutions — brethren 
as sons of England." Surely a noble sentiment, 
and one as earnestly reciprocated. 

Preaching from the text Joel ii. 28, "Your 
old men shall dream dreams, your young men 
shall see visions," Dr. Lawrence entered feehngly 






THE PURITAN FATHERS 201 

into the story of the Puritan exodus from the 
mother town and the splendid fulfilment of the 
dreams of the Pilgrim Fathers. 

Twenty years almost before Dr. Lawrence 
came, the pulpit of St. Botolph's was occupied 
by his predecessor, Phillips Brooks, "the great 
American citizen and prophet, whose personahty 
impressed his generation." About this time 
Philhps Brooks preached also before Queen Vic- 
toria, and, on the same day, his brother, John 
Cotton Brooks, was at Boston, where he again 
filled St. Botolph's pulpit in the fall of 1906. 
Soon after this second visit to Old Boston John 
Cotton Brooks died in Paris. Before his second 
Boston sermon an important proposal had be- 
come known, one in which both Bostons were 
supremely interested. During 1905 the diocese 
of Massachusetts came into possession of seven 
hundred and fifty dollars as the nucleus of a 
fund for a Cathedral to be erected in Boston, the 
see city; and the suggestion was made that it 
would be a graceful and fitting thing to make the 
Cathedral building a reproduction of the glorious 
parish church of Old Boston, "where Cotton 
served so long and at whose altars so many of 
the colonists to America had worshipped." The 
question arose as to whether St. Botolph's 
would make a good model for a Cathedral, and 
to study this point the Rev. George Wolfe Shinn, 
Rector of Grace Church, Newton, Mass., was 
sent over to the Lincolnshire Boston in the 
autumn of 1905. He there inspected the plan 



202 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

of the grand old fabric, which appeared gen- 
erally to be suited for the purpose in view. 
The necessary steps were afterwards taken to 
give effect to the proposal. It was felt that, 
while the special needs of the diocese should be 
provided for, all the essential features of St. 
Botolph's should be incorporated in the new 
building. The hope on both sides of the At- 
lantic was that this praiseworthy project might 
take material shape, and, as an enduring monu- 
ment, crown and consohdate for all time the 
union of East and West, of which it should stand 
as the symbol and the pledge; continuing within 
its broadening influence the Hfe and work in- 
augurated by the Christian zeal of the Puritan 
founders; unfolding in its story in stone and 
reproductive beauty of architectural design the 
vista of a grand past to future generations. 

Americans were again present in Old Boston — 
they are seldom altogether absent in the tourist 
season — at the Sexcentenary Celebration of the 
founding of the church in June, 1909. The Mas- 
sachusetts capital was not officially represented 
at the festival, which was of a general character 
in regard to the church's history and took no 
special cognisance of the most important period 
of that history, the first part of the seventeenth 
century, and therefore had no particular attrac- 
tion for transatlantic visitors. Letters of invi- 
tation were sent out by the Chief Magistrate to 
the Mayor of the New Boston, by the Town 
Clerk to the American Ambassador, and by the 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 203 

Vicar to the Bishop of Massachusetts; but these 
invitations, no doubt for the reason stated, met 
with no response. As already seen, however, 
Americans unofficially attended the celebration, 
in the course of which America and the Boston 
connection were by no means overlooked, either 
at the civic assembly or in the pulpit of the 
church. At the former function Earl Brown- 
low, Lord Lieutenant of the County, spoke of 
the intimate connection referred to, and, while 
regretting the absence of accredited representa- 
tives, rejoiced at the presence of visiting Ameri- 
cans, because, said he, they "knew perfectly 
well that the great deeds of their forefathers, 
whether in science or hterature, or in architec- 
ture, or deeds of war either on land or sea, be- 
longed equally to America as to England. They 
all felt, both in England and in America, that 
* blood was thicker than water.'" 

The Sheriff of Lincoln brought the association 
nearer home when he said ''they could not look 
back without appreciating fully the fact that 
the forefathers of the Boston people of to-day 
left their homes to go to a strange unknown 
land. Whether one sympathised with their con- 
victions or not, one could not but applaud the 
fact that they went forth because of the convic- 
tions that were in them, and they recognised 
to-day that they had made known the name of 
Boston the wide world over." 

The Town Clerk of Boston gave the topic a 
practical turn by observing that "even to-day 



204 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

the ancient fame of their old town was reflected 
to some small extent on them from their name- 
sake across the Atlantic, and of that they were 
occasionally rather unpleasantly reminded by 
receiving their correspondence, badly directed, 
via Boston in America." 

It was left to the Bishop of London, fresh 
from an American tour, to emphasise the con- 
nection, which he did at the parish church to a 
crowded congregation in a sermon based upon 
Psalm xlv. 17, ** Instead of thy fathers thou 
shalt have children whom thou mayest make 
children in all lands." 

"I suppose," said the preacher, "there are 
no places more entirely dissimilar than the 
two Bostons. Here lies your dear old Boston, 
among the quiet Fens, with its eyes fixed upon 
the past. There hes young Boston, and I saw 
it last year, with its eyes wholly fixed upon the 
future." Having glanced at Boston's past and 
at the passing over of the Puritans, "We may 
well," said the bishop, "take old and young 
Boston as two representative types of the Old 
World and the New, and what I want to try, 
on this most historic day for you, is to point out, 
first what the New World owes to the Old World, 
what the Old World in the second place owes to 
the New, and what eff'ect the hope, and the 
pride, and the faith of the child ought to have 
upon the Old World and the Mother Church. 

Deahng first with the question "What does 
the New World owe to the Old?" and speaking 





^^ 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 205 

from his own observation of things in America, 
the preacher said their children there, as they 
looked across the sea, were thanking them for 
their poets, their writers, and their history, for 
the great Christian truths taken out there, and 
for the historic ministry and the gift of an un- 
broken Church. He asked churchmen and non- 
conformists how long they were going to quarrel 
over such a thin Hne of partition as really divided 
them to-day. Where, he asked, would they 
now find the Prelacy which drove their fore- 
fathers across the seas? **How unreal to be 
separated from the Old Church for something 
which is banished! I found on the other side 
of the Atlantic none of the bitterness, none of 
the misunderstanding which divides us in the 
old country, and I want you to realise how the 
children over there, with far more love for one 
another, far more understanding, far less bitter- 
ness, cherish the great Christian truths that we 
have passed on to them." 

Turning to the question "What has the Old 
World to thank the New World for?" the 
bishop said the children of the New World en- 
couraged them by their behef in their fathers' 
faith, and cheered and inspired them by their vis- 
ions, especially with the glorious motto they had 
written across their lives, "The evangehsation of 
the world in this generation." Further, concluded 
the bishop, they owed to the New World also the 
honest lesson, in their rehgious and domestic 
life, to hold on to that which they had. 




\\ 




COTTON'S SUCCESSORS AT SAINT 

BOTOLPH'S — THE CHURCH'S LATER 

HISTORY — PILGRIM SHRINES 



\ 




XI 



COTTON'S SUCCESSORS AT SAINT 

BOTOLPH'S — THE CHURCH'S LATER 

HISTORY — PILGRIM SHRINES 

The glorious pile will still inspire 
With grand design and pure desire 

As long as England's free; 
And Boston's sons will gem the crown 
That towers above the ancient town 

In grand solemnity: 

As members of that hero band. 
Bold pilgrims to the Western Land, 

With sons of equal worth 
Who toll'd the bell on Faneuil Hall 
Whose iron tongue with clang'rous call 

Proclaimed a nations birth. 

— From the Poem St. Botolph's ^ 

^ EFORE concluding it will be interesting 
=^ to retrace our steps somewhat, and, re- 
^^ suming the main lines of this story, to 
glance at the records of successors of John 
Cotton at old St. Botolph's and the subsequent 
history of his church. Cotton was followed by 
his friend Anthony Tuckney, D.D., son of the 
Vicar of Kirton and a fellow of Emmanuel Col- 
lege, who had been Mayor's Chaplain since 
1629. 

How Dr. Tuckney came to estabhsh the 
Library in Boston Church has already been men- 

* By W. S. Royce, Pinchbeck Hall, Lincolnshire, written for the 
Sexcentenary Celebration. 



210 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

tioned. Upon his petition Archbishop Laud, 
when holding a visitation at St. Botolph's, 
ordered *'that the roome over the porch of the 
saide church shall be repaired and decently 
fitted up to make a Hbrarye to the end that in 
case any well and charitably disposed person 
shall hereafter bestow any books to the use of 
the parish, they may be there safely preserved 
and kept." Many books were so bestowed, 
with money with which to buy more. But a 
number of them disappeared — were thrown or 
taken away — and for years the Library was 
neglected. It is well kept now, and contains a 
few rare volumes and MSS. which well repay 
inspection; but it was never of any service to 
the parishioners. 

While Tuckney was vicar the Civil War was 
in progress, and Boston was filled with Round- 
head troops, who are beheved to have destroyed 
the remains of the mediaeval stained glass in 
the church noted by Gervase Holies in 1640. A 
memorandum in the parish register of October, 
1643, the month of the Wince by fight, written 
in a top corner of the page, reads: "N.B. The 
souldiers buried here this year belonged to the 
ParHament Army. At this time the Earl of 
Manchester lay at Boston, and was joined there 
by Ohver Cromwell after the Defeat of the Earl 
of Newcastle's Forces near Gainsborough." And 
the names are given of several '*souIdiers" who 
died and were buried at Boston. 

Tuckney held appointments at Cambridge 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 211 

which excused his presence there, and was not 
often seen in such an unsafe place as Boston. 
But in 1648 the witch-hunting campaign began; 
and, sandwiched between charges set down for 
"carrying AHison's wife to Lincoln for witch- 
craft'* and witnesses to appear against her at 
the Assizes, and for *'the search'* of Allison 
and one "Sarah Sewally, accused for witches," 
we find an item "for sugar and wine at the 
visitting of D' Tuckney," who had a hand in 
the wretched business: which is not surprising 
when an authority hke the learned Dr. Thomas 
Browne, in his "Religio Medici," then not long 
pubhshed, had declared that "for my part I do 
ever believe and do surely know that there 
are witches," and that "phantoms appear often 
and do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and 
churches." Here was a state of things as bad 
as anything of the kind prevailing in New Eng- 
land. The Boston Corporation paid a yearly 
salary to a searcher for witches, and the mania 
was rife throughout the Eastern Counties.^ 

In 1 65 1 Mr. Banks Anderson was engaged by 
the Corporation as preacher at seventy pounds 
per annum. From 1632 he had been minister at 
Holbeach. His second wife was Mary Whiting 
of Boston, whom he married in 1645. Anderson 
was a member of the Independent or Congre- 
gational party in the Church, and when in 1658 



'The Eastern Counties are to-day the most superstitious part of 
England. As late as the spring of 191 1 the case was published of a 
father and son who, to ward off bewitchment, were said to have stuck 
pins into live toads and then burnt them! 




212 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 



the Protector Cromwell called a convention or 
synod of the Independent ministers at the Savoy, 
Anderson was one of the Elders summoned to 
attend and draw up a declaration of faith. 

In the accounts of the Mayor of Boston from 
1652 onward there are frequent entries of charges 
for presents of sugar and wine, sturgeon and 
what not, sent by his sympathisers to that "in- 
flexible Republican,'* Sir Henry Vane, now one 
of the heads of the Independent party and 
residing, since his return from Massachusetts, at 
Belleau near Alford in Lincolnshire. 

Pests of a certain type abounded in these 
topsy-turvy times, and troubled the authorities 
at home almost as much as they did the New 
England rulers. Old Boston's Mayor in 1652 
leaves on record a charge for money "spent at 
the Peacock when we went about the towne 
seeking for vagrants and fanatics." Four years 
later Quaker George Fox, founder of the Society 
of Friends, passed through the county, and from 
Crowland arrived at Boston, "where most of 
the chief of the town," he writes, "came to our 
inn, and the people seemed to be much satisfied. 
But there was a raging man in the yard; and 
Robert Craven was moved to speak to him, and 
told him 'he shamed Christianity,' which with 
some few other words so stopt the man that he 
went away quiet. And some were convinced 
there also." One is tempted to say that Robert 
Craven would have been useful in New England ; 
but that is doubtful. 



h^t 



m 



m 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 213 

At the Stuart restoration in 1660 Tuckney 
resigned the Boston living, and, having given 
up his Cambridge preferments, died in 1670. 
Anderson lost his position in 1662 and formed 
an independent congregation, and on his death 
in 1668 was buried in the church, where the 
gravestone of his daughter may also be seen on 
the floor space near the south door. Anderson 
is thought — not without good reason — to have 
been a Baptist. The Corporation who employed 
him had in fact to procure someone else to ad- 
minister the rite of baptism; and it was during 
this time that the mediaeval font of the church 
was demohshed. 

The Church revival of the later Stuart period 
had httle force in Boston, which was thoroughly 
imbued with the Puritan spirit. In 1660 came 
Obadiah Howe as Vicar; he was rather the last 
of the Puritans than the first of the new regime. 
The son of a Vicar of Tattershall, as curate of 
Stickney he had entertained the Roundhead 
leaders when on their way from Boston to the 
victorious Winceby fight in October, 1643. He 
was minister at Gedney before being preferred 
to Boston. The services having been re- 
sumed, efforts were made to put the church in 
order. A new reredos was erected, but was 
taken down in 1724 and sold to Gedney church 
in 1740, and a new altar and font were set up. 
A sketch of this font is preserved in the church. 
Howe was a voluminous writer. Dying in 
1683, he was buried in the church, and his monu- 



^^ 



214 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

mental brass is on the wall of the Cotton 
Chapel. 

The next Vicar was Henry Morland, a fellow 
of St. John's College, Cambridge, who had been 
lecturer at Boston since 1675. 

In 1702 Edward Kelsall was instituted. He 
had been master of the Grammar School, and 
took some interest in the Library. Kelsall was 
an active man. In 171 3 he started the Bluecoat 
charity for clothing and educating poor boys 
and girls. He also brought back organ music 
to the services of the church, which had been 
without it since 1590. It had a reputation for 
good music in early times, when Leiand writes 
of St. Botolph's as being **for a parish church 
the best and fairest of all Lincolnshire, and 
served so with singing, and that of cunning 
men, as no parish in all England." That was 
high praise. The "cunning men" were of 
course musicians. The organ is first mentioned 
in a document of about 1480, more than a 
century before the Puritans sold the instrument. 
Now, after an interval of more than another 
century, it was restored through the efforts of 
Vicar Kelsall, who procured the erection in 1717 
of an organ built by Christian Smith, nephew 
and fellow-workman of the celebrated Father 
Smith, who came to England with the return 
of the Stuart dynasty. This organ stood on a 
screen between the chancel and the nave; in 
front of it was a singers* gallery, facing west, 
which is now in the Roman Church. On either 




S^^^^ 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 




side of the chancel are still the doors that led 
to the rood-loft demolished by order of the 
Corporation in 1590, with the sanction of the 
Vicar of that day ; above are the doorways, now 
blocked up, through which the loft was entered. 
The nave and aisles were in Kelsall's time filled 
with pews rising gradually to the sills of the 
windows from a central area in which the pulpit 
and reading-desk stood; the chancel was only 
used for the quarterly communions. 

On Kelsall's death, in 17 19, Samuel Codding- 
ton became Vicar. He also had been the Gram- 
mar School master. Under him the mediaeval 
vestry on the south of the chancel, and the dis- 
used chapels at the east of the aisles, were 
destroyed. 

John Rigby, who succeeded Coddington in 
1732, was another Grammar School master. In 
1742 the churchyard was considerably enlarged 
by the gift of John Parish of the Ostrich Inn 
and adjoining premises on condition that the 
Corporation would pull down the old gaol and 
shops adjacent and devote the site to the same 
use, which they did. Other buildings in this 
corner of the Market-place were razed by the Cor- 
poration a few years later, when the churchyard 
assumed, if we include the railed-in Ingram monu- 
ment, much the appearance it presents to-day. 

Rigby died in 1746, when John Calthrop 
stepped into the vacant living; he was also 
Vicar of Kirton and a prebendary of Lincoln 
Cathedral, Calthrop, in 1751, erected a new 




2i6 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

vicarage house, the Corporation assisting with 
funds. This second vicarage was pulled down 
in 1870 and the ground upon which it stood 
taken into the garden of the existing residence. 
The old vicarage occupied by John Cotton, 
which had an approach from Wormgate, was 
demoHshed in 1850. 

There was Wesleyan preaching at Boston in 
1756, and the effect of it was a revival of Puritan 
dissent. The General Baptists of Boston, one 
of the oldest communions in the kingdom — 
formed about 1649, ^^^ having in 1662 and 1664 
undergone the ordeal of persecution — were now 
endowed with some landed property and a good 
site for their church, which since 1739 ^^^ been 
a barn. In 1781 — thirty-five years after Cal- 
throp's coming — a great change was wrought 
in the interior of Boston Church, when the 
fine old flat panelled ceilings, which were in 
a bad state, were replaced by the present sham 
vaults, the springers of which conceal the 
clumsy props of the original nave roof. The 
ceihngs are light and graceful, but decidedly 
unsuitable, especially in the clerestory, the 
height of which they diminish by over twenty 
feet. Ecclesiologists consistently abuse them, 
and they are rather a bad memory to poor 
Calthrop, who died four years after they were 
put in. He was buried at Gosberton, his native 
place. 

Samuel Partridge, F.S.A., appointed in 1785, 
held the rectory of the south mediety of Leverton 



^A^ 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 217 

until 1797 and was also Vicar of Wigtoft and 
Quadring. In his time the Fens were enclosed. 
On Partridge's death, in 1817, Bartholomew 
Goe was called to Boston. Under this vicar the 
Chapel-of-Ease, or St. Aidan's Church, was built, 
on the authority of a private Act of Parliament 
by which the stipend of the minister was charged 
upon the town. In 1835 was passed the 
Municipal Reform Act, under which the patron- 
age of ecclesiastical benefices, the advowsons of 
which were held by municipal bodies, became 
vested in the bishops of dioceses, though the 
corporations retained the right to sell the ad- 
vowsons. Goe was therefore the last of the 
eighteen vicars appointed by the Corporation. 
That thrifty assembly was in a selhng humour. 
It sold the advowson of the Chapel-of-Ease, 
along with the Corporation plate and regalia — 
a crime for which posterity will not readily 
forgive it — and, after two vicars had been col- 
lated by bishops of Lincoln, also sold the advow- 
son of the vicarage, for which Mr. Herbert 
Ingram paid ten hundred and fifty pounds. 
From the widow of the purchaser it passed to 
the Watkin family, and in 1906 the patrons 
vested it in the Bishop of Lincoln in right of 
his see. 

On Goe's death in 1838 John Furness Ogle 
was made Vicar. The Victorian revival had now 
set in. As in Howe's case, Ogle was rather the 
last of the old school than the first of the new 
era; but he could not altogether resist the move- 






218 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

ment. The restoration of the church was com- 
menced in 1840, and, after having ceased for a 
while, was continued after his death in the early 
fifties, when the large raised modern font given 
by Mr. Beresford Hope was erected and the 
church was re-dedicated, the Reverend G. B. 
Blenkin being Vicar. After Canon Blenkin came 
Canon Stephenson, and then Canon Heygate. 

We have seen something of St. BotoIph*s 
Church in John Cotton's time. Let us now 
survey its venerable interior as it appears to- 
day. One of the sights it presents is the splen- 
did stone vaulting of the tower, one hundred and 
fifty-six feet from the ground, probably the 
highest in the world. This groined ceiling, in- 
serted when the church was restored, is at the 
level of the second story. The tower itself, 
rising two hundred seventy-two and one half 
feet, octagonal crown included, is the tallest in 
the country. The width of the nave, one 
hundred feet, is equalled by only one Enghsh 
cathedral. The full length of the church is 
three hundred feet. 

There is a curious correspondence between its 
architectural features and the divisions of time. 
Thus the three hundred and sixty-five steps to 
the top of the tower coincide with the days in the 
year; and as many windows are in the church 
as there are weeks in the year. The months 
are represented by the twelve pillars, and the 
days of the week by the doors. The twenty- 
four steps to the Library stand for the hours of 




s^v: 




<.\ ' 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 219 

the day; the sixty in each staircase leading to 
the chancel roof equal the minutes of the hour 
and the seconds of the minute. 

There are chimes in the tower connected with 
the clock, as there were in the seventeenth and 
succeeding centuries. Mention of the clock 
and chimes is made in the local records as far 
back as 16 14. Renewed in 1732, the chimes 
were worn out and ceased to play a hundred 
years later. In 1867 were installed thirty-six 
carillons made by the famous founder Van 
Aerschodt of Louvain. These did not prove 
satisfactory, and in 1897 they were recast into 
four larger bells which now supplement the 
eight ringing bells of the peal, also used as chimes, 
which play sweet hymn tunes or popular national 
airs at intervals during the daytime. 

At the 1853 restoration traces of the earlier 
church were discovered four feet below the level 
of the present building; and one Norman stone 
coffin and the curiously carved lids of others, 
found among the old foundations, are now to 
be seen in the sepulchral recesses of the north 
and south aisle walls. Strange to say, when the 
existing pile was raised the great four-storied 
lantern-capped tower, its chief glory, was not 
begun till the rest of the fabric was completed. 
Doubtless it was in the original design of the 
architect, but the building of it came last; it 
is indeed considered by many to have been left 
unfinished after all. The oldest portion of the 
church is the foundation of the tower, laid with 



220 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 



much ceremony, but to little purpose then, in 
1309, excavations having revealed a gravel 
layer on the clay subsoil five feet below the 
bed of the haven. The first stone of the pro- 
jected tower was put in position by Dame 
Margery Tilney, assisted by Richard Stephen- 
son, a merchant of Boston, and Rector John 
Truesdale, each of whom placed upon the stone 
five pounds sterling. But from some cause the 
work did not proceed much further for nearly 
thirty years. Then the church was commenced 
and by degrees completed; and the chancel 
having been lengthened two bays, the tower itself 
was erected. Probably the delay in setting it 
up was occasioned by a natural fear lest a proper 
foundation should not be secured for so tre- 
mendous a structure. It was a masterly con- 
ception. Combining in its composition height, 
strength, and hghtness, its outhne gradually 
diminishes in bulk and might well have ter- 
minated with the top parapet and angle pin- 
nacles; but above these, crowning the tower 
proper, rises the lordly lantern, borne up by 
flying buttresses from the corner pinnacles and 
supported by angle buttresses, the whole cul- 
minating in slender pinnacles tipped with gilded 
vanes. 

The lofty arch under which we pass on to the 
floor of the tower once contained the west 
window; the level of the sill is shown by the 
place where the moulding ceases on the inner 
wall. Before the tower was built turrets stood 







THE PURITAN FATHERS 221 

at this end which are still used as stair-turrets, 
and the west door, restored in 1891, is believed 
to have been shifted to its present position from 
the wall enclosing the nave. A section of 
beautifully sculptured stone, displaced at the 
renovation of the portal, found its way to the 
American Boston and now adorns the base of 
John Cotton's memorial in the First Church. 
This time-worn fragment must date from the 
earhest construction of the church, and unques- 
tionably, three centuries and more later, it 
formed a part of the main entrance during all 
the years John Cotton was Vicar of St. Botolph's. 

As the visitor stands at the west end of this 
noble fane — this pilgrim shrine, a Mecca of 
Americans — and looks about him, he will as- 
suredly find himself sympathising with the view 
that it possesses probably the most magnificently 
proportioned interior of any parish church in 
England. On his right he will see the Cotton 
Chapel, enclosed since 1895 by an oak screen 
which replaced the older curtains hung between 
the arches. A little beyond is the porch, with 
the Library above it now thrown open to the 
church by the removal from over the south door 
of Mequignon's copy of Rubens' "Descent from 
the Cross," a large triptych which from 1724 for 
a hundred and thirty years served the church as 
an altar-piece. 

The height, length, and spaciousness of this 
cathedral-Hke edifice all impress the spectator, 
who, while reahsing its vastness, can imagine 



222 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

something also of its mediaeval grandeur, with 
its rich ornamentation and stained glass, before 
the lumber of screens and furniture vanished 
and the flat panelled ceilings with carvings and 
painted shields made way for their eighteenth 
century substitutes. 

But the church still presents a goodly sight, 
with its pillars and arches and modern coloured 
windows, especially that at the east end, rear- 
ing in proud splendour over the obtruding 
reredos, where in the chancel are fifteenth 
century stalls, once thickly coated with paint, 
with their quaintly wrought miserere seats, 
numbering sixty-three, and surmounted now, 
like the chancel doorways, by canopies copied 
from Lincoln Cathedral, with the donors' names 
and arms inscribed above them. Carved oak 
canopy work also covers the sedihse within the 
altar rails, where is a piscina, and the aumbries 
have oak doors and beautiful iron fittings. 

Around these ancient walls are many me- 
morials to bygone Bostonians, hatchments and 
marbles, tablets and armorial brasses. They 
are plentiful and more interesting in the south 
aisle, where we find a Dineley brass engraved 
with a skeleton bearing arms. The Dineleys 
(also written Dingley: a William Dingley was 
Mayor in 1597), neighbours of the Earl of 
Lincoln at Boston, were early settlers in New 
England. A brass placed here has the name 
and arms of Nightingale Kyme, who, dying in 
18 14, was the last of his line, one of the oldest in 





zT- 



I 



L-^r^ 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 223 

Lincolnshire. It was a Kyme who married the 
widowed Princess Cicely, daughter of Edward 
IV., who, with her first husband, Viscount Wells, 
was a member of the Guild of Corpus Christi 
at Boston. Another Kyme married Anne Ays- 
cough, the martyr. The Kyme family held 
Kyme Tower from 1600 till Nightingale's death; 
before them it belonged to the Rochfords, who 
hved there before the church was built. 

In one of the arched recesses is a brass to 
Robert Townley (d. 1588), Comptroller of the 
Port, and Joanna his wife; also a copper tablet 
to Alderman Robert Wilby (d. 1791), twice 
Mayor; and a brass to Pishey Thompson, the 
local historian, who for a time resided at Wash- 
ington, but, returning from America, died at 
home in 1862. 

In a blocked doorway of the staircase once 
leading to the rood-loft of the famous Chapel 
of Our Lady is a brass with arms to Richard 
BoIIes (d. 1 591), grandfather of Sir John BoIIes 
of Thorpe Hall, Louth, hero of the Legend of the 
Spanish Lady. The brass is quaintly inscribed 
with a record of the BoIIes' family history; coni 
cerning which it may be stated here that two 
of Sir John's sons, Charles and John, Royalist 
cavaliers, were killed in the Civil War, one at 
Winceby, fighting against Cromwell and the 
Boston men, and the other near Winchester. 

It is in respect of this "Chappell of Our Lady 
in St. Botolph's" that Fox in his **Acts and 
Monuments" gives an amusing account of how 




224 THE ROMANTI C STORY OF 

Thomas Cromwell assisted the Boston depu- 
tation in cajohng Pope Julius II. into renew- 
ing his Papal indulgences: "And thus were 
the jolly pardons of the towne of Boston 
obtained." 

Here in these recesses, near the old sedilia 
and statue brackets, all finely carved, are the 
altar tombs and effigies of a knight of St. John 
of Malta, supposed to be a Dineley, and Dame 
Margery Tilney, ancestress of Anne Boleyn, 
who laid the first stone of ''Boston steeple." 

Further westward in this aisle, on a wall 
which blocks the portal of a former outer chapel, 
is a brass to one of Boston's most distinguished 
sons, Henry Hallam the historian, whose grand- 
parents he in the adjacent churchyard. Grand- 
father John Hallam, a surgeon, was twice 
Mayor of Boston, in 1741-54. His son John, 
father of the historian, passed from Boston 
Grammar School to Eton and King's College, 
Cambridge, and became Canon of Windsor and 
Dean of Bristol, and is buried in St. George's 
Chapel, Windsor. The Latin inscription to the 
historian has thus been rendered into English 
verse ^ : 

To the memory of Henry Hallam, 
Who first of all historians of our land 
Laid on himself, and kept it, this command — 
Like a just judge that leans to neither side, 
To sift the evidence and so decide. 

* By Mr. Richard Newcomb. The second line of the second verse 
is not represented in the original, but Mr. Newconib claims that other- 
wise the paraphrase is fairly close for a metrical one. 



: 



! 



/ 




THE PURITAN FATHERS 225 

Here, where men knew of old her father's name — 
Here, where 'twas honoured ere it sprang to fame — 
This brass that name — at home to her as dear 
As great abroad 



his daughter bids to bear. 



Also noteworthy is the beautiful httle ala- 
baster monument in the chancel to the classical 
scholar and hterary critic, John Conington, 
Corpus Professor of Latin at Oxford University, 
to whose father, the Reverend Richard Coning- 
ton, first minister of the Chapel-of-Ease, the fine 
lectern in the church, a large brass eagle, is a 
memorial. Their ancestor, Jacob Conington, was 
Mayor of Boston in an historic year, 1775, which 
witnessed the battle of Bunker's Hill at the New 
Boston. The Coningtons became extinct in 
1906 on the death of a surviving daughter of 
Richard Conington. 

Those whose benefactions helped the poor, 
as well as the men who brought honour to the 
town, have their names perpetuated on the 
walls of the church. John Blount and John 
Wood, who left legacies to the parish, are com- 
memorated by the stone shields over the tower 
doorways. Both these worthy Bostonians were 
twice Mayor towards the close of the seventeenth 
century, and both died in the same year, 1702. 
North of the records of their pious gifts is the 
tablet of Bartholomew Goe, B.A., once vicar, 
and near it a mural marble to Job Phihps, 
musician (d. 1850), carved at the foot of which 
is an open music-book, with the words "You 
will remember me" over the score of the song. 



^Mi^ 



226 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

The spacious floor on which we stand is 
flagged with sepulchral slabs. Several of them 
show the matrices of brasses, Flemish and Eng- 
lish, of which they were stripped in Puritan — 
and other — times. Some flat stones in the 
nave and aisles are similarly denuded. Two of 
the brasses taken from these slabs, figures of a 
man and a woman, worn quite bare, are now on 
the inner wall of the Cotton Chapel. Two finer, 
though mutilated, specimens of ancient monu- 
mental brasswork may be seen on either side 
of the church altar. One of them, brought 
here from the nave, represents Walter Pescod, 
a merchant of Boston and benefactor of St. 
Mary's Guild, who died in 1389; originafly 
Mistress Pescod formed part of the brass, and 
most of the canopy which surrounded them is 
still in situ. The other is the figure of a priest, 
clothed in surplice, almuce, and cope. 

Tombstones which tell their mute story at 
the west end of the building are all that is left 
of Mayors and their kindred and other local 
notabihties long since gone to dust. The prac- 
tice of burying in the church was discontinued 
many years ago; the last interment, a soHtary 
revival of the objectionable custom, was in 1 868. 

The name of Hutchinson recalls the early 
days of the Massachusetts Colony. Here may 
be read the stone of Sarfiuel Hutchinson (Mayor 
1680-95) and Catharine, his wife, who both 
died in 1696. Stephen Hutchinson, presumably 
their son, was Mayor in 1699. 




vj 








THE PURITAN FATHERS 

Specially interesting is a great heavy memo- 
rial slab, rudely and curiously carved, to one 
Wisselus, "Civis et Mercator Monasteriensis,'* 
who died in 1340. This antiquarian relic, 
found on the site of the church of the Fran- 
ciscan Friars in Boston, was built into the 
wall of a house in Spain Court, at the back 
of the old warehouses of the merchants of 
St. Mary's Guild in Spain Lane, whence it was 
rescued, and, as we are informed by a brass 
plate let into the church pavement, entrusted 
to the Vicar and church wardens, for better 
preservation, in 1897. 

Only one or two other memorials need be 
noticed. Over the inner door of the Cotton 
Chapel is the brass of Dr. Obadiah Howe, the 
last of the Puritan vicars of Boston buried in 
the church. He married Ehzabeth Olter, a 
widow, who, after his death, married John 
Tooley (d. 1686), whose stone is on the floor of 
the church, carved with arms and having brasses 
still in good condition. The tombstone of the 
thrice-wedded lady is also there. 

Above the outer door of the chapel is a brass 
tablet, once in the south aisle, engraved with 
the portrait of a contemporary of Cotton, 
Thomas La we, who was an Alderman of Boston 
in 1632 and Mayor three times after that. He 
is pictured here in a fuII-sIeeved gown, a large 
ruff^, and skuH cap. There is a story that Lawe 
sat in Parhament during the Protectorate and 
opposed and annoyed OHver Cromwell. No 



11) 



"^^^i 



/JSJ. 



sriii^ 




228 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

evidence exists of this, but he was probably a 
Royalist. 

Buried in the Cotton Chapel, where his stone 
lies under the altar with its splendid new reredos, 
is John Laughton, founder in 1 707 of Laughton's 
School, first carried on here and afterwards at 
the old Church-house over the way, for the 
educating of poor freemen's sons. A stained 
glass window to Laughton was put in the chapel 
by freemen and freemen's sons in 1858. 

Some untoward incidents have marked the 
history of the church. In November, 1775, 
while John Calthrop was Vicar, it was broken 
into during the night and all the valuable com- 
munion plate was stolen. The thieves got away 
with two silver flagons and a silver dish, chased 
and gilt, and a silver cup and cover, large vessels 
given by Lord Coleraine; two smaller silver 
cups, an ancient silver patine, and three more 
silver dishes. No trace of the plate was ever 
discovered, but the parish replaced it with 
another service less than a year after the 
robbery. 

In May, 1803, a fire, caused by careless work- 
men, broke out in the nave roof, the flames 
spread rapidly, and only the strenuous exertions 
of the townsfolk saved their beloved church from 
destruction. 

The building was often flooded by high tides 
flowing up the Witham in former days, and the 
tower has several times been struck by hghtning 
within living memory. In July, 1893, a pin- 



'^A 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 229 

nacle of the lantern was demolished. Sunday 
night, August 5, 1900, brought a terrifying 
experience. The people were standing at the 
close of the service, while the organist played 
the Dead March, when a lower pinnacle of the 
tower, weighing upwards of a ton, was thrown 
down by lightning and crashed through the 
nave roof, shattering the steps of the font and 
causing a panic. A few moments later the con- 
gregation would have been leaving and loss of 
life would probably have resulted. The tower 
was struck a third time on the afternoon of 
May 13, 1908, and the incident was again of an 
alarming character. It was market day and the 
town was full of country folk, many of whom 
witnessed the damage done to St. BotoIph*s. 
The stonework was cut through as cleanly as 
though with a giant knife, and down toppled a 
mass of masonry, a lantern pinnacle, before the 
eyes of the startled spectators. Part of the dis- 
lodged stone fell into the churchyard below and 
buried itself in the ground near where the pin- 
nacle descended in 1893. But this time a good 
portion of the masonry fell inwards, driving 
holes through the bell chamber roof and smash- 
ing to spHnters the heavy beams, one of which 
was forced out and came tumbhng down on 
the bells, making them toll weirdly amidst the 
thunderstorm. People afterwards ascending the 
steeple were assailed by an overpowering sul- 
phurous smell on the winding staircase leadmg 
to the belfry. The tower has since been pro- 



230 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

tected by the presence of a lightning conductor, 
a precaution which, incredible as it may seem, 
had never been taken before. 



The final words of this volume shall be con- 
cerning another pilgrim shrine, the Guildhall, 
after the Church the most ancient and interest- 
ing building in Boston. For not only was this 
historic hall closely associated with the Pilgrim 
Fathers and the men of Old Boston who helped 
to make New England — in whose day and 
generation it was already growing an old build- 
ing — but it carries us back to the period of the 
rich mercantile guilds which were the evidence 
of the town's mediaeval prosperity. 

For some years in the hands of the charity 
trustees and Grammar School governors, the 
Guildhall had fallen into a neglected state and 
become even structurally unsound. In 1909, 
during the mayoralty of Mr. George Jebb and 
at his instigation, the hall was thoroughly ex- 
amined by an architect on behalf of the Society 
for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, who made 
recommendations for its careful restoration at an 
estimated outlay of six hundred pounds; and in 
consequence of his report, and also of the pub- 
lic-spirited advocacy of Mr. Jebb, then deputy- 
Mayor, and Mr. Joseph Cooke, an ex-Mayor of 
the borough, supported by the Mayor for the 
year, Mr. James Eley, it was decided in 191 1 to 
do this work and preserve the building by means 
of a town's fund. Happily the scheme was 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 231 

carried a step further still, and completed by 
the generous act of Mr. Frank Harrison in pro- 
viding the purchase money for the hall, a sum 
of five hundred pounds. The double object was 
thus secured of the restoration and preserva- 
tion of the building and its return to the cus- 
tody of its natural and proper guardians, the 
Corporation. 

This landmark of Boston for nigh five hundred 
years, rehc of its former greatness, possesses a 
wonderfully interesting history. Anciently the 
hall of St. Mary's Guild, it is a rare example 
of early Gothic brickwork. Guilds played an 
important part in the life of the Middle Ages. 
Guild companies existing in Saxon times gave a 
social status to their members, but after the 
Conquest the guilds became trading or religious 
bodies or simply friendly associations. The 
object generally seems to have been the promo- 
tion by union of the good of the whole member- 
ship. Boston, as became its mediaeval activity, 
was well supphed with guilds; there were six 
principal guilds in the town, and the chief of 
them all and the earliest in date, though not 
the first to be incorporated, was the Guild of 
the Blessed Mary. This was founded by some 
merchants in 1260, but was only incorporated 
in 1393 on the petition of Anne of Bohemia, the 
Queen of Richard II, whose head, as we have 
seen (in Chapter I. and subsequently), is carved 
on the miserere bracket under a stall in Boston 
Church, no doubt in commemoration of this 



232 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 




event. The Guild presumably built, and cer- 
tainly maintained, the Chapel of Our Lady, 
called the "Scala Cceha," or ladder of heaven, 
which occupied the two eastern bays of the south 
aisle and was screened off, the western screen 
being crowned by a loft. Pope Sixtus IV. 
granted sundry privileges to the brethren and 
sisters of the Guild in 1475, ^^^j ^^ already 
told, it also obtained, in a peculiar way, other 
indulgences from Pope Juhus II. in 15 10. 
Though the Guild had its Chapel in St. BotoIph*s, 
it does not appear to have owned any property 
at its foundation, although it distributed a 
thousand loaves of wheaten bread and a thou- 
sand herrings to the poor annually on the feast 
of Purification. Two priests were on the original 
foundation. 

The present hall, which may have succeeded 
an earher one, was built after the incorporation 
of the Guild, which at the beginning of the 
sixteenth century had coming in about three 
hundred and fifty pounds a year, a sum then 
equal in purchasing power to ten or twelve times 
the present amount. Nearly half this revenue 
was derived from rents, and the remainder from 
legacies, subscriptions, and donations. The in- 
come of the Guild was expended in maintaining 
seven priests, twelve choristers, and thirteen 
bedesmen (who lived in houses in Bedesmen's 
Lane at the back of the Guildhall), and in carry- 
ing on the Grammar School, the master of which 
was allowed nine pounds per annum and eight 



m 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 233 

and fourpence for his clothing. By 1520 the 
receipts of the Guild had increased to five hun- 
dred and forty-five pounds, quite a vast sum 
in those days. 

The wealth of the Guild of St. Mary is shown 
by its goods as enumerated in the inventory, now 
in the hands of the Corporation, taken in 1534. 
The record is a parchment roll nine feet long, 
closely written on both sides! According to 
this stock-taking St. Mary's House or Hall con- 
tained a table of alabaster two yards in length, 
with altar cloths and vestments, pix, bells, and 
candlesticks; also an image of Our Lady made 
of wood, standing in a tabernacle, and a smaller 
image of Our Lady fashioned in alabaster; to- 
gether with a printed mass-book with the "Mass 
of Saynt Botulph wrytten at the ende of ytt." 
Many books are described, and in the " Re- 
vestry e," or vestry, were certain sacred rehcs, 
fingers and bones of saints and other treasures, 
enclosed in precious metal, and numerous 
articles of silver and gilt, the total weight of the 
"jewels" being over a thousand ounces. Costly 
vestments and various paraphernaha were also 
in the collection. In the hall were "five candle- 
stykes hyngynge hke potts,*' whereof the largest 
had five branches and each of the others three. 
There were eight tables on the north side of the 
hall, joined and nailed to the tressels, and seven 
on the south side similarly arranged, with twelve 
forms placed by the sides of the tables, and three 
tables and as many forms in the chapel chamber. 



\\ 



234 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

A great quantity of tabic linen is mentioned: 
the tablecloths were six, seven, and even nine 
yards long. The brass pots, pans, and kettles 
used in the kitchens weighed ten hundred and 
fifty pounds, and the pewter and laten ware was 
half that weight. The three "greatt broches 
[spits] of yron" were each three and a half 
yards long. A beam of iron had four leaden 
weights. These things were in the hall kitchen. 
A "lower kitchen" contained, among other 
utensils, a huge vessel of lead, *'a grete cage 
wherein to put pullen [poultry], a sowe [large 
tub], 13 ale tubs and 20 ale potts." These 
details indicate that the members of the Guild, 
whatever else they did, fared well and often, 
and in their way had as great a relish for the 
good things of life as had Pope Julius, that 
"greedy cormorant" for whose "holy tooth," 
which dehghted in "new fangled strange deli- 
cates and dainty dishes," Cromwell and his 
Boston men prepared their "gelly junkets" and 
got the "jolly pardons" in exchange. 

But bad days were in store for the Guild, 
which lost all its belongings. To make amends 
to Boston for the injury he had done it by dis- 
solving the rehgious houses, Henry VIII. in 1545 
raised the town to the rank of a free borough, 
gave it a charter of incorporation, and granted 
it several privileges; and, in consideration of 
the payment of sixteen hundred and forty- 
six pounds, made over to it, among other 
plunder, the lands and buildings of the friaries 














•^i';^/^ 






,(ro«?<^ 



C V>'" "fe*- /.iW -^'f' 'V^^ o*-^^: ^^ "f"'^" ^''•"' , 



t"* 



Photographed from the Boston Corporation Record Book 

Record of First Meeting of the Boston Corporation under 
Henry VIII's Charter, on June i, 1545 



When Nirholiis Robertson irns elected Mayor, the twelve Aldermen were sworn in, 
Richard Goody ng took the oath as Recorder, his yearhi fee being £6-13-4, <""' Ceorge 
Forster was chosen Town Clerk, at an annual salary of £3-6-8. 






THE PURITAN FATHERS 235 

and the property owned by certain abbeys and 
monasteries in Boston, together with the pos- 
sessions of the lately attainted Lord Hussey, 
including Hussey Tower. Next year the Guild 
of St. Mary surrendered to the Corporation. 

King Henry died shortly after, and the ad- 
venturers who surrounded his successor declined 
to recognise the surrender of the Guild because, 
they said, the incidental maintenance of clergy 
made the whole of its expenditure liable to the 
taint of superstitious uses. This was a pretext 
on which the young King Edward was made to 
confiscate all the Guild's property and give it 
to William Parr, brother of the Queen Dowager, 
who was created Earl of Essex and Marquess of 
Northampton. 

Vengeance followed swift upon this evil deed. 
The king died in 1553, and Lord Northampton, 
for being concerned in the conspiracy to put 
Lady Jane Grey on the throne, was attainted 
of high treason and his estate forfeited to the 
Crown. The goods stolen from Boston were 
wasted and gone, but the lands, together wath 
lands seized from other guilds, and of course the 
Guildhall, were restored by the charter of Phihp 
and Mary in 1554 and vested in the Corpo- 
ration, on trust for certain purposes, which 
included the maintenance of two priests (the 
Vicar and the Lecturer), provided for the resus- 
citation of the Grammar School (which after 
an existence of two hundred and fifty years be- 
fore its suppression under Edward VL was thus 



236 THE ROMANTIC STORY OF 

revived, though it was not actually reopened 
till the reign of Queen Elizabeth), and directed 
the maintenance of four bedesmen who were to 
pray in Boston Church "for ever, for the good 
and prosperous state of the Queen whilst living, 
and for her and her ancestors* souls after her 
decease"; a duty which, it is much to be feared, 
has been sadly neglected in later times. 

The Guildhall was thereafter used by the 
Corporation for its meetings, and it has since 
continued to be closely hnked with the pubhc 
affairs and the social Hfe of Boston. Here John 
Cotton attended the "great feasts of the town," 
and here civic entertainments and the balls 
given by members of ParHament were held until 
1822, when the Assembly-rooms were built in 
the Market-place. Here Recorder Belhngham 
and his predecessors and successors sat at the 
Quarter Sessions from 1545 to 1836: the Guild- 
hall court-room where the Pilgrim Fathers faced 
the Justices was stripped of its fittings only in 
1878. And here, in the old Council Chamber, 
the mayors of Boston were always made from 
the date of incorporation down to 1 887. 

The Corporation ceased to meet for ordinary 
business in this building in 1835, on the passing 
of the Municipal Reform Bill, when the charities 
they administered were turned over to the 
charity trustees, who took possession of the 
Guildhall. Perhaps it was as well they did so, 
for the reformed Corporation did not scruple to 
sell the town regalia and plate, and they would 



THE PURITAN FATHERS 237 

probably have sold the Guildhall too had a 
tempting offer come along. Happily they never 
had that opportunity. 

A better spirit now prevails, and we may be 
sure that the Guildhall, with its long past and 
memorable associations, restored alike in its 
fabric and in its ownership, will be faithfully 
preserved and safeguarded as being, next to the 
church, the most venerable and historic and in 
every way interesting building in Old Boston. 



The End 




J' 

i 



INDEX 




"Abigail," The, i8 
Adams, Charles F., 176 
Adams, John, 166 
Adams, John Quincy, 166 
Addington, Israel, 104 
Alexander, Benjamin, 29, 37 
Allen, Matthew, 109 
"Ambrose," The, 21 
Anderson, Mr., Merchant, 104 
Anderson, Mr. Banks, 211-213 
Anne of Bohemia, 7-8, 23 1 
"Arabella," The, 20, 21, 27, 28 
Armstead, William, 37 
Audley, Christopher, 145-146 

Bacon, Sir Nathaniel, 1 1 1 
Banks, Sir Joseph, 12 
Barefoot, Thomas, 63, 64 
Barkham, Sir Edward, 1 1 1 
Barlow, Bishop, 32-33 
Baron, Peter, 33 
Bawtree, Leonard, 56 58, 64 
Bayard, Hon. T. F., 191-195 
Bedford, William, 190, 191 
Bellingham, Francis, 106 
Bellingham, John, 162 
Bellingham, Richard, 28, 64, 73, 
106-108, III, 120, 121, 123, 

137, 138-139. 141, 142. 143. 
161, 162-164, 236 

Bellingham, Samuel, 162 

Bennett, Mr., 63 

Blenkin, Canon G. B., 186-187, 
189, 196, 218 

Boleyn, Anne, 8, 89, 224 

Boleyn, Sir Thomas, 8 

Boston, Lincolnshire, 1-18, 23, 
25-30, 32-37, 43-45. 49. 55- 
64, 68, 73. 75. 78, 80, 85-99, 
104-111, 113, 117, 135, 136, 
141-142, 145-148, 167, 168, 
181-206, 209-237 

St. Botolph's Church, 4, 5, 

8, 14, 85-93, 137. 182, 185-189, 
196, 199-202, 209-230 



Boston, Guild of St. Mary and the 
Guildhall, 7, 12-13, 80, 94, 
199-200, 227, 230-237 

Grammar School, 13, 89, 

191, 200, 214, 215, 230, 235 

Old Town Gaol, 12, 90 

Market Place, 12, 93, 136, 



Hussey Tower, 13, 235 

St John's Church, 13, 93 

Old Vicarage, 91, 216 

Old Church House, 92 

Pacy House, 92 

Town bridge, 93 

House of Assembly, 94 

Boston, Massachusetts, 7, 9, 

22-25, 29, 74, 88, 109, 112- 

144, 151-177, 181-182, 185- 

206, 221 

King's Chapel, 24, 152, 161, 



174 



First Church, 136-137, 153, 
175-177, 188-190, 197-198, 
221 

Old South Church, 174 

Christ Church, 174 

Trinity Church, 174-175, 



187-188, 197 
Bradford, William, 10, 115 
Bradstreet, Dorothy, 151, 152 
Bradstreet, Simon, 27, 35, 73, 

141, 165 
Brewster, William, 10, 11, 12, 

115, 125 
Bright, Francis, 19 
Britton, Mr., 131 
Brooks, John Cotton, 201 
Brooks, Rev. Phillips, 187, 196, 

197-198, 201 
Browne, Abraham, 56, 63, 64 
Browne, Dr. Thomas, 211 
Burgess, Dr. John, 35 
Burke, Edmund, 181 
Byfield, Nathaniel, 165 



B:^^^i 




240 



INDEX 



Calthrop, John, 215-216, 228 
Calvin, John, 33, 34. 36, 38, 92. 

177 
Cambridge, Mass., 109, 152 
Cambridge University, England, 

30-33 
Camden, 95 

Carlyle, 160 

Chadwick, Rev. John White, 143 
Charles I, 112, 120 
Charles II, 164, 213 
Charlestown, Mass., 18, 22, 27 
Chelmsford, 109 

"Chillingworth, Roger," 140, 144 
Clark, John, 161 
Coddington, Samuel, 215 
Coddington, William, 18, 27, 108, 

165-166 
Coney, John, 80, 81, 152 
Coney, Mary Cotton, 80, 152 
Coney, Thomas, 61, 62-64, 80- 

81, 152 
Cooke, Dr. Elisha, 165 
Cooke, Joseph, 230 
Cotton, Elizabeth, 152 
Cotton, Ehzabeth Horrocks, 51, 

75 
Cotton, John (i), 18, 20-21, 23, 

27, 28-35, 37, 38, 43-52, 61, 
63-64, 67-73, 74-93. 95-96, 
98, 103-106, 108, no, 112, 
1 13-124, 126, 128, 136, 139, 
140, 142, 151-161, 166, 168, 
171, 172, 174, 175-177, 185- 
186, 188, 189, 196, 197-198, 
200, 201, 209, 216, 218, 221, 
236 

Cotton, John (2), 151, 152 

Cotton, Maria, {see Mather, 
Maria Cotton) 

Cotton, Mary, {see Coney, Mary 
Cotton) 

Cotton, Roland (i), 30 

Cotton, Roland (2), 139, 151 

Cotton, Sarah, 139, 151 

Cotton, Sarah Story, 75, 81, 94, 
103, 151, 152, 154 

Cotton, Seaborn, 103, 151, 152 

Craven, Robert, 212 

Cromwell, Oliver, 8, 28, 51, 62, 
112, 124, 168, 210, 227 

Cromwell, Sir Richard, 8 

Cromwell, Thomas, 8, 9, 224 

Davenport, John, 81 
Davis, Thomas, 165 




Derby, 30 

"Dimmesdale, Arthur," 137-145, 

Dineley, Family, 25, 222, 224 

Dod, John, 76 

Dorchester, Mass., no, n4, 154 

Dorset, Lord, 77 

Dudley, Anne, 165 

Dudley, Paul, 165 

Dudley, Thomas, 17, 18, 21, 22, 

23,27, 28, 73, 74, 114, 121, 122, 

141, 160, 165, 185 
Dunning, Rev. Dr., 195, 198 

Earle, George, 37 

Edward IV, 98 

Edward VI, 235 

Egginton, Jeremiah, 152 

Eley, James, 230 

Eliot, John, 24, 151 

Elizabeth, Queen, 37, 62, 95, 98, 

145, 148, 236 
Ellis, Dr. Rufus, 172, 188-189, 

190 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 157 
Endicott, John, 18, 115, 141, 160 
Everett, William, 185 

Fawsley, 76 
Ferrers, Nicholas, 68 
Fiennes, Lady Arabella {see 

Johnson, Lady Arabella) 
Fiennes, Charles, 21 
Fiennes, Harrington, 26 
Fiennes, Sir Henry, 26 
Firmin, Mr., 116 
Fisher, Anne (see Leverett, Ann 

Fisher) 
"Four Sisters," The, 19 
Fox, Alderman, 78 
Fox, George, 212 
Frothingham, Dr. Nathaniel L. 

136, 153 
Frothingham, Rev. Paul Revere, 

156, 176 
Fuller, Samuel, 115, 166 

Gager, Deacon, 24 
"George," The, 19 
George, David, 130 
Goddard, Archdeacon, 87 
Goe, Bartholomew, 217-218, 225 
Goodrick Family, 106 
Gorges, John, 25 
Gorton, Samuel, 130 



!?» 




INDEX 




241 



"Griffin," The, 81-82, 104-106, 
109, 110, 113 

Hackford, Mr., 190 
Hallam, Henry, 173, 224 
Harrison, Frank, 231 
Hartford, Conn., 109 
Haven, Samuel Foster, 29 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 24, 108, 

135-145. 164, 185, 195 
Haynes, John, 109, 121, 122, 125, 

1 66 
Henry VUI, 8, 13, 120, 234-235 
Henry, Matthew, 50 
Henry, Philip, 50-51 
Herbert, George, 82 
"Hereward the Wake," 4, 183- 

184 
Heygate, Canon, 218 
Hibbins, Anne, 143, 163-164 
Hibbins, William, 143 
Hicks, Jasper, 37 
Higginson, Francis, 19, 24 
Hill, William, 58 
Holland, Sir Thomas, 7 
Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 73, 76, 

109, 113, 122, 166 
Hooper, Master, 73 
Hope, Beresford, 218 
Hopkins, Oceanus, 103 
Hopkins, Stephen, 103 
Horbling, 27, 35, 73 
Horrocks, Elizabeth, (see Cotton, 

Elizabeth Horrocks) 
Horrocks, Rev. James, 51 
Hough, Ann Rainsford, 161 
Hough, Atherton (i), 28, 61-62, 

73, 81, 105, 141, 161-162 
Hough, Atherton (2), 161 
Hough, Elizabeth Whettingham, 

105-106, 161 
Hough, Samuel (i), 105, 106, 161 
Hough, Samuel (2), 161 
Hough, Samuel (3), 161 
Hough, Sarah Symmes, 161 
How, John, 51 

Howe, Obadiah, 213-214, 217, 227 
Hubbard, John, 165 
Hudson, Hannah, (see Leverett, 

Hannah Hudson) 
Hume, 173 

Humphrey, John, 25, 73 
Humphrey, Lady Susanna, 25 
Hussey, Lord, 13, 235 
Hutchinson, Anne, 108, 123, 126- 

127, 156, 165, 166 



Hutchinson, Edward (i), 108 
Hutchinson, Edward (2), 108- 

109, 166 
Hutchinson, Richard, 108 
Hutchinson, Thomas, 166-167 
Hutchinson, William, 108, 166 
Hutchinson's History of Massa- 
chusetts, 79, 106, 109 
Hutton, Robert, 26 

Ingelow, Jean, 95 
Ingoldsby, Anthony, 59 
Ingram, Herbert, 217 
Ipswich, Mass., 121 
Irby, Anthony, 56, 58, 64 

James I, 35, 55, 68, 112, 138 

James, Thomas, 27 

Jebb, George, 230 

Jenkinson, John, 61 

"Jewel," The, 21 

John, King, 5, 97 

Johnson, Lady Arabella, 19, 21, 

22, 23, 24, 25, 114 
Johnson, Isaac, 18, 19, 23, 24-25, 

73, 74, 114 
Julius II, Pope, 9, 232, 234 

Keayne, Robert, 131 
Kelsall, Edward, 214-215 
Kemble, Captain, 131 
Kingsley, Charles, 183 
Kirkstead, 26 
Knox, 177 

Kyme, Anthony, 147 
Kyme, William, 147 

Lambe, Sir John, 35 

Lane, Hon. Jonathan A., 198-199 

Laney, Dr., 69 

Laud, Archbishop, 77, 87, 145, 

168, 170, 210 
Lawrence, Bishop, 200-201 
Leiand, 89, 98, 214 
Leverett, Anne (i), 104 
Leverett, Anne (2), 165 
Leverett, Anne Fisher, 104, 161 
Leverett, Elizabeth, 165 
Leverett, Hannah, 165 
Leverett, Hannah Hudson, 104, 

164 
Leverett, Hudson, 164 
Leverett, Jane, 104 
Leverett, John (i), 28, 108, 164- 

165 



242 



INDEX 



Leverett, John (2), 165 
Leverett, Mary, 165 
Leverett, Rebecca, 165 
Leverett, Sarah, 165 
Leverett, Thomas, 28, 52, 73, 75, 

81, 104-105, 116, 161, 164 
Lewis, David, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63 
Leyden, 11 
Lincoln, 35, 43, 98 
Lincoln, Bridget, Countess of, 

18, 21 
Lincoln, Theophilus Clinton, Earl 

of, 18, 19, 21, 25, 73, 75, 81, 

112 2.22 

"Lion's Whelp," The, 19 
Littlebury, Humphrey, 98 
Lloyd, James, 165 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 

159, 184 
Luther, Martin, 177 
Lynn, Mass., 113, 167 
Lynne, Henry, 131 

Macaulay, 170 

Marbury, Anne, (see Hutchin- 
son, Anne) 
Marbury, Rev. William, 108 
Masham, Sir William, 73 
Mather, Cotton, 28, 29, 152, 171 
Mather, Increase, 152, 154, 174 
Mather, Maria Cotton, 152 
Mather, Richard, 154 
Mather, Samuel, 152 
"Mayflower," The, 11, 19 
Melton, Richard, 9 
Middlecott, Sir Thomas, 56-60, 

64, 80 
Morland, Henry, 214 
Mountain, Dr., 69-70 

Narragansett Bay, 125 
Neile, Bishop, 43-51, 55 
Norton, John, 171 
Norton's "Life and Death of 
Cotton," 79, 120 

Ogle, John Furness, 217-218 

Pacy, Family, 92 
Palmer, Edward, 131 
Park, Rev. Charles E., 176 
Parrowe, Mr., 37 
Partridge, Samuel, 216-217 
Pelham, Herbert, 162 
Pelham, Penelope, 162 
Perkins, William, 31 



Peters, Hugh, 121, 122, 124, 125 
Philip and Mary, 12, 78, 235 
Phillips, George, 27 
Pierce, William, 109 
Plymouth, Mass., 10, 11, 17, 18, 

23, 24, 115, 125, 130, 151 
Pond, Mr., 79 
"Prosperous," The, 25-27 
Providence, R. L, 130 
"Prynne, Hester," 135-144, 147, 

Prynne, William, 144-145 

Quincy, Edmund (i), 108, 166 
Quincy, Edmund (2), 166 
Quincy, Josiah, Jr., 166 

Rainsford, Ann, 161 

Ratcliffe, Philip, 131 

Ratcliff^e, Robert, 174 

Ray son, Marmaduke, 26-27 

Revere, Paul, 174 

Reynolds, Rev. Grindall, 154 

Richard II, 7, 231 

Rigby, John, 215 

Robinson, John, 20 

Salem, Mass., 22, 23, 24, 27, 114, 
125, 131, 165, 185 

Saltonstall, Sir Richard, 28, 74 

Sarpi, 74 

Say and Sele, Lord, 21, 28, 119 

"Scarlet Letter," The (see Haw- 
thorne, Nathaniel) 

Sedgwick, Sarah, 164 

Sempringham Manor House, 18, 

73. 74 

Shawmut, (see Boston, Massa- 
chusetts) 

Shinn, Rev. George W., 201-202 

Sixtus IV, Pope, 232 

Skelton, Samuel, 19, 27 

Skirbeck, 10, 35, in, 112, 113, 
167 

Smith, Nicholas, 29, 33, 88, 

Smith, Richard, 87 

Some, Dr., 31 

St. Botolph's Town, Lincoln- 
shire (see Boston, Lincoln- 
shire) 

Stephenson, Canon, 196-197, 218 

St. John, Elizabeth (see Whiting, 
Elizabeth St. John) 

St. John, Oliver, 112 

Stone, Rev. Samuel, 109, 113, 166 



INDEX 



243 



4 



Story, Sarah (see Cotton, Sarah 

Story) 
Symmes, Sarah, 161 
Symmes, Rev. Zechariah, loi 

"Talbot," The, 19, 21 

Talbye, Dorothy, 131 

Tattershall, Castle, 18, 73, 74, 75 

Tennyson, Lord, 184-185 

Thorns, Mayor, 189 

Tilney, Dame Margery, 8, 89, 
220, 224 

Tomhnson, John, 86 

Townsend, Penn, 165 

Trimountain (see Boston, Massa- 
chusetts) 

Truestdale, John, 220 

Tuckney, Dr. Anthony, 81, 87, 
III, 209-211, 213 

Tyler, Professor, 158 

Underhill, Captain, 125-126 

Vane, Sir Henry, 121-124, 125, 

126, 165, 212 
Vasyn, Jeremiah, 112 

Wade, Prudence, 151 
Ward, Nathaniel, 121 
Ward, Samuel, 68 
Warwick, Earl of, 28 
Westland, Richard, 58, ill 
Wheelwright, Rev. John, 108 
White, John, 18 

Whiting, Mr. (Biographer), 79 
Whiting, Elizabeth St. John, 112, 
167 



Whiting, Esther, 167 

Whiting, James (i), iii 

Whiting, James, (2), 167 

Whiting, John (i), no 

Whiting, John (2), no 

Whiting, John (3), iio-iii 

Whiting, John (4), 167 

Whiting, Mary, 211 

Whiting, Robert, in 

Whiting, Rev. Samuel (i), iio- 
112, 167 

Whiting, Rev. Samuel (2), 167 

Whiting, Wilham, 167 

Whittingham, Ehzabeth (see 
Hough, Elizabeth Whitting- 
ham) 

Wilhams, John, 68-71, 80, 93 

Williams, Richard, (see Crom- 
well, Sir Richard) 

Wilhams, Roger, 18, 73-74, 115, 
123, 124-125, 130, 155, 156 

Wilson, John, 23-24, 115, 116, 
122, 123, 126, 127, 131, 137, 

138, 139. 142, 153-154. 161 
Winthrop, Henry, 24, 114 
Winthrop, John (i), 18-24, 27, 

74, 103, 106, 109, no, 114- 
116, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 

139, 140, 153, 155, 160-161, 
162, 165, 175. 177, 185 

Winthrop, John (2), 161 
Winthrop, Hon. Robert C, 22 
Wool, Thomas, 29, 35, 36, 37 
Worship, Dr., 63 
Worshippe, James, 37 
Wright, Edward, 81 
Wright, Samuel, 37 




OCT 2 1912 




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